Dishpig and Snowball, Matchstick and Bookmonger
by Gray Glube
Summary: Life turns out to be more than busing tables and thesis statements, more than bad behavior and cigarettes on school property, more than heroes and villains. It's life like microwaved leftovers; a hot skin, a cold center, a soggy aftertaste. WP/FG
1. The Wall: Prologue Part 1

**Title:** Dishpig and Snowball, Matchstick and Book Monger  
**Author:** grayglube  
**Pairing/Character:** Icegirl/Warren  
**Rating:** M

**Summary:** Life turns out to be more than busing tables and thesis statements, more than dysfunctional behavior and cigarettes on school property, more than superheroes and villains. It's life like microwaved leftovers; a hot skin, a cold center, and a soggy aftertaste.

**Spoilers/Warnings:** None. Post-Movie by two years.

**Chapter:** 1: The Wall (prologue)

**A/N: **This is a revamp of the story "Dishpig and Snowball" with slight changes to the title. Some much needed but not asked for time off from writing gave way to a load of new ideas and an all around better story. The premise is largely the same but the story will have major and minor changes all that aside I hope you enjoy the new version as much or more than the last.

* * *

_**Due to many concerned reports and past occurrences the Maxville Sky High School District has funded new construction on school grounds to alleviate certain nuisances that have come to attention regarding the parking premises. Barriers have been set up on the buildings south side around the edge of the parking areas, both teacher and student, to resolve the problems faced in previous years of cars falling into the self sustaining, free- floating crash guard under the school that acts as our current buffer against environmental and accidental collision with objects. The barrier itself is encased with it's own buffer to prevent any damage to vehicles that may come into contact with it.**_

_**We hope this new measure will prevent damage to both cars and the school during times of inclement weather, destination change, and changes in altitude that often cause the schools ground to shift leading to a slide of all objects in the parking areas. We ask all teachers, students, and parents to be aware of this new addition to the school grounds. **_

_**All other completed construction projects are summarized in detail in the appropriate sections of this handbook and all future projects will be made clear through announcements and letters home to all student and parents. **_

* * *

That was what the student handbook from his junior year said about it. It sounded nice and the parents were thrilled to have a stop to all the phonecalls home about their kid's cars falling off the edge of the school, the school was happy to finally stop getting angry calls about the cars falling off the school from parents, and the teachers were all breathing a sigh of relief about not having an insurance policy that covered automobiles falling off floating schools.

The handbook said a lot of nice things.

Nice things that were printed on the carcasses of way too many dead trees.

Nice trees used for such an impractical purpose.

Impractical because no one ever read the handbook in some people's opinions, especially in the opinions of such people who were environmentally conscious, which included one person he saw every day, sometimes not wanting to see every day, but someone who always, _always_, made her opinion on such matters clear both explicitly and implicitly very loudly to anyone who happened to be listening or at the same lunch table.

Everyone just called it 'The Wall.'

The teachers thought it was ugly, the students tried to cover it in crudely rendered pictographs in graffiti-like mediums, and then there were some that walked through the halls of Sky High that loved it.

The teachers had to deal with it, the kids that covered it in badly drawn depictions of penises had to clean it, and the people that loved it found need of it every day and on any given day it was not uncommon to hear someone ask someone else at their locker, 'You going to the wall?' 'Yeah, but I only got two left. Can I bum?' 'Yeah no problem I'm going to the Rez later I'll hobo you a few.'

He was one of those type of kids.

The type of kid that loved it, not the type of kid to stand around and talk at other people's lockers.

The type that towards the end of his lunch period or right before all the buses came to bring everyone home at the end of the day or before getting on another bus to go down into Maxville for driver's ed. climbed up on an often replaced garbage can and jumped over the wall to grab a quick bit of a tumor growing, black cough producing, cancer creating, smoke break.

All together there were a handful of sophomores, a generous dose of juniors, and about a third of all the seniors that paid homage to the wall, freshman weren't allowed it was 'Wall Code.'

'Wall Code' was just a term someone who had graduated had come up with, some self important idiot probably who thought it sounded cool.

What 'Wall Code' entailed was really only four things, 1: That there should always be something to step on to get back over the wall, 2: If you bum, you owe, 3: Only go over the wall at the part of it where the camera can't see you, 4: Don't throw anything over the edge.

The thing about no freshmen was more an unspoken rule, more for the fact that most freshmen didn't smoke to begin with or even know there was a place to get away with it on school property.

Whoever had come up with the term had also probably thought it was a good idea to slather the rules all over the back side of the wall in red spray paint, personally it was all too Animal Farm for his tastes.

He was a regular. That was how he'd met her in sophomore year when he was fifteen and stolen a pack out of his mother's half full carton that'd been sitting in the car as she went into the deli next door to The Paper Lantern to buy hot dog buns and powdered iced tea mix.

While he couldn't remember the day he'd first spoken to her he could say that'd he'd been in one of her classes and seen her in the hallways and in the library and just generally 'around' but it had been by then months after his fight in the cafeteria and weeks after one of the most less than stellar wins in save the citizen that he'd been a part of that he'd been in a situation where she was something other than a part of the florescent highschool scenery or one of the bodies that filled a chair in a classroom like everyone thought of everyone else that wasn't in their orbit of frequently talked to peoples.

It had been in April, a month before the school was marked for destruction by one Gwen Grayson.

He remembered because while every other girl broke out their spring wardrobes she looked better suited for an Alaskan winter and sat with her back against the 'Wall Code.'

He didn't say hello and neither did she.

She didn't ask for a light with a cliché thrown in for good measure, something he got much too often out of everyone.

He didn't ask what was up with her scarf, and hat, and gloves, and leather jacket on the sixty degree day.

The only thing she said was "Do you get 'let's heat this up' often when you get into fights? Because I tend to get 'Let's get frosty' a lot myself."

She didn't look at him when she said it, just looked down as she ground her cigarette out under the sole of the timberland boot she had her jeans tucked into.

He'd taken a drag and thought it was a good question, but he'd still answered it with a 'No' because his life wasn't as nearly as interesting and pun-filled as people liked to think is was just because of his powers.

She shrugged, gave a 'See ya Smokey' as a goodbye, and climbed over the wall using a wobbly desk someone had stolen from a classroom and hefted over the wall.

He remembered hearing the lid on the garbage can crack and break and also her lashing out by way of expletive usage when she fell into remnants of garbage can and bag.

It was after when he'd taken his last drag and the sound of her angry foot scuffles fading out of hearing distance and across the parking lot and hopped over the wall himself that he gave a small chuckle to garbage can encased ice sculpture.

He stopped laughing when he slipped on it.

Most days since then she'd been there and they called each other things like smoky and frosty and talked about inconsequential things about inconsequential circumstances and bummed smokes off each other and asked for answers to upcoming tests that were going to be given in classes after lunch.

It was a routine, if he'd ever went as far as to even classify it.

His fingers had once skimmed the edges of the thick pages holding those filaments of the "old days", hoping for death by paper cut.

The scrapbook must have been an added touch, an after-thought of cruel sentimentality left somewhere she'd knew he'd look eventually, for clues, not the trip down memory lane.

Senior year, Sky High. Pictures. Old hall passes. Candy wrappers. Pamphlets. Stickers. Cut up cigarette carton headlines. Sections of the student handbook made frequent appearances with red pen marks and highlighted portions and the snippets of wit that made him remember her the most in the margins.

Things had changed and maybe in their youth they hadn't thought of how much that would mean.

Will was scared. He didn't blame him.

Layla was crazy. He could understand.

Magenta was uninvolved. He couldn't forgive her.

Zack was somewhere. He couldn't find a place to start looking.

Ethan was "transcended." He wouldn't know where to look.

She was singular.

He was divergent.

They were really the last ones left.

For the moment at least.

He wondered where the book was now, probably lit it up with the rest of his desk. He regretted it's destruction the moment he thought about it.

Whatever they'd put on his arms to keep infection out of the burns was tight and suffocating on his upper extremities.

His chest heaved, alveoli fragile and dry with pain inside his lungs as he struggled to get them to move inside his chest in anyway that would help hold air.

It hurt.

Thinking maybe he should laugh because it was funny in his kind of way funny; the way he was going to die in some stupid hospital bed, staring at the stupid white popcorn crackled ceiling, feeling stupid that he thought_ it_ wouldn't get him he realized he wouldn't be able to even grin.

The morphine was working too well for him to even try.

Or maybe his kind of jokes weren't ever really funny.

There was a word for what was going on, respiratory depression or retardation or something. Too much morphine, or maybe too little lung.

His thoughts went to how cold she could be while he was lying in his bed listening to the nurses outside his door fumble with the med-cart preset pin, it was time for rounds.

He thought of how good it would feel for some ice water in his veins, slowly he realized hers had probably already frozen, her veins. Even blood froze eventually, if it got cold enough.

Thinking he was dying in a better way immediately made him hate himself.

Trying, struggling to stay above the slip and slide and fade and phase-out of the I.V. drip he tried to mentally recall the last time he'd seen her. Warehouse, angry, mission, Global Guardian, _uniform_, "See it?", frost, lighter, wet socks.

He knew he was falling asleep. His thoughts were coming letter by letter, slower and slower until the shapes got blurry and the bee swarms that tasted like blue corn chips came for his head and the worm in his arm got twisty with a drip-drippy sound and the plastic wrap got snuggie and the white shoes became floppy kitten sacks and the moreyfin was nice and warm and like pudding and he wanted to mix some peppery icecubes and make cheeseburgers.

* * *

The nurse came into the room, checked the chart, flushed the line with saline, fluffed the pillows, rewrapped the young man with the "No Information" status's arm again after douching it with antibiotics, she made a note to tell the charge nurse that the morphine wasn't strong enough to knock him all the way out.

He was babbling with slited eyes at her direction but not at her, unfocused and confused and thoughts skipping too fast for him to really think.

Maybe up the concentration a bit.

Since he didn't look like he was in pain she decided it could wait despite never seeing such a high dosage unsuccessful in conking out someone.

He mumbled something about the mice being covered in moss and the cloud talking to him.

She smiled and signed her initials on the chart.

Rounds needed to be finished and the new nurse practitioner was on the floor, the RN doubled checked the room before leaving hastily thinking it was a shame such a nice piece of man was going to waste.

* * *

**A/N: **Thanks for reading.


	2. Playground Games and Falconswift

**Title:** Dishpig and Snowball, Matchstick and Book Monger  
**Author:** grayglube  
**Pairing/Character:** Icegirl/Warren  
**Rating:** M

**Summary:** Life turns out to be more than busing tables and thesis statements, more than dysfunctional behavior and cigarettes on school property, more than superheroes and villains. It's life like microwaved leftovers; a hot skin, a cold center, and a soggy aftertaste.

**Spoilers/Warnings:** None. Post-Movie by two years.

**Chapter:** 2: Playground Games and Falconswift

**A/N: **This is a revamp of the story "Dishpig and Snowball" with slight changes to the title. Some much needed but not asked for time off from writing gave way to a load of new ideas and an all around better story. The premise is largely the same but the story will have major and minor changes all that aside I hope you enjoy the new version as much or more than the last.

* * *

There was a rumor about her being third generation back then, it had started in freshmen year.

There had been her display right off from the school parking lot the first day of sophomore year where she froze the kid with super sight and one of his buddies solid when they got a zap up, or maybe the more correct term was through, her skirt.

There were all the uncreative and unsolicited names she had by junior year for being 'icy', or 'frigid', or even the ridiculously stupid 'too cool for school' that she got from a few of the same people every day, some friends and most just garden variety pricks.

She was one of the few kids who didn't have the collector's editions or original copies of her parents name and power rank cards plastered in her locker next to a list of to-be or could-be super hero aliases written in a loud colored sharpie marker right on the metal proclaiming 'This Locker is Property of: …'

She liked a bastardization of her own name rather than one that described her powers.

She couldn't make a snowball if her life depended on it, she was stuck with ice chunks, she didn't know what that was all about.

Her preferred foods were spicy not icy.

Her favorite color was orange not blue or purple like everyone thought it would be.

Her life plan included a lot but nothing remotely resembling anything that would put her superhero schooling to good, or any type of, use

* * *

There was no rumor about him being third generation at all, despite the fact that he was one of the kids that actually was.

There had always been the remark about him turning out just like his father hiding under every bad grade or fight or snarky comment he tried to not be a part of that he knew people were just dying to bring up when he fucked up.

There were all the hours of practice and studying and work he never got credit for, not because he didn't do them but because those weren't the things people liked to notice about certain types people with a certain kind of history.

He was used to getting a new mattress three times a year because of the smell of burned metal springs and foam that leaked from his bedroom, across the first floor, up the stairs, and into the upstairs office that made his mother claim it kept her from concentrating on spreadsheets for work.

He liked to sack out knowing everything was done and knowing what was coming after he woke up.

He couldn't roll his R's, just gurgle them.

His preferred doing something to doing nothing any day, despite whether that meant doing laundry or going to work or anything that was considered menial. The more tiring the better.

His favorite things were too often composed of cigarettes, fortune cookies, and people watching: the hobby not the part about exhibitionism.

His life plan was to work everything out as he went along.

* * *

September 8th (Tuesday, _9:23am_)

The hum and shivery pulsation of the lab was only half of the reason the inside of her gut felt chilly the other half was in her opinion a combination of 9am and a breakfast that consisted of coffee and cheap 'twelve dollars a carton,' no name Indian reservation cigarettes.

The swivel chair was broken, her more spin than swivel movements on it made the height catch release in oddly incremented sputtering poofs that made the chair go down like a jerky carousel made of cheap plastic and uncleanable blue polyester fabric.

"They have pancakes Lo."

"Pancakes aren't waffles."

"You're such a brat."

"Don't talk to me."

If anything the pancakes they served in the cafeteria were just about the same gluey consistency of doorstops, she'd rather eat pancakes out of the garbage can outside a 7-11 on a ninety degree day.

The older woman took the bad mood of the teen as a hint.

"I'm sorry about your highlighter."

"It's already broken."

"Do you want me to get you another, I'll go over to the other lab and nick one from someone's desk."

"No, I'm done. I just wanted to do one more set of notes, I'm ahead anyway. Doesn't matter."

The teen flexed and relaxed her grip habitually on the fluorescent yellow writing implement leaving a rotund pressure mark against her palm, her fingers sweeping over the top to cap and uncap with fast clicks that went in time to the room's other occupant's clacks on the keyboard.

The pile of pen-marked loose-leaf sandwiched between chunks of pages in a textbook looked like a floppy rectangular mouth that called out to be highlighted and underlined and annotated, she accidentally capped the skin of her thumb under the cap she was clicking while distracted by the prospect of violating a never before used textbook with ink and sticky notes.

Her skin bubbled with a blood blister.

Across the two desks the room's other occupant had said something.

"'cuse me?"

The woman enunciated her words with unneeded volume and punctuation to every syllable.

"When. Did. You. Go. To. Sleep?"

"One. I took a nap before that. Woke up at like four-thirty."

"Did you pack yet?"

"No, I was busy with vocab. and objectives and notes."

She didn't add the 'until the tip of my highlighter got all smushy' that she wanted to the statement.

"You should go do that then. Go pack, take a shower, get dressed, those pajamas are ridiculous."

"They're _ridiculously_ comfortable and warm. What time are we leaving?"

"Twelve, one, something like that. We have to go food shopping after."

The teen hated food shopping, the meat section and ice-cream buffet trench made her wish for mittens.

"Did you sign my stuff yet?"

"Is it due tomorrow?"

"No, but that's when I'm handing it in."

"Then I'll sign it tomorrow morning."

"Pfft, can't you do it now?"

"I'll sign them tomorrow morning."

"Just do it now."

She didn't enjoy all the running around with wordplay, the repetitive loop of bull. She'd go along with it if she could smoke and do something while talking, but smoking was 'strictly prohibited' in the lab and her highlighter was broken and leaky.

Instead she settled for chewing on the cap and biting off the circular stump on the end. She was aware of the habit that the older woman called 'oral fixation,' to the teen it was less physiological and more boredom related.

"I'll do it if you make me coffee."

"You're so lazy, 'make me coffee', 'I'll sign it tomorrow', 'make me coffee', 'I'm tired', 'make me cof…-"

"Blah, blah, blah. Make me coffee and I'll sign it."

The woman's mocking 'blahs' was made in fast gunfire succession so instead of sounding preteen-ish and catty it sounded man-ish and like a hungry Pac-man's 'waka-waka-waka.'

"Can't, gotta shower. I'll make it, but you have to get it."

"Okay, then guess you don't want me to sign your stuff."

"You're an ass. I'm leaving."

The option of a lukewarm shower in a too bright, too white, too cubicle-like stall in a chilly dorm-like cell-like monochromatic bathroom was more appealing at the moment than continuing the current line of dialogue despite the fact that the preset temperature of the Global Guardian facility was between 68-72 degrees and she'd frost before she had time to towel off.

"Come oooooon, make me coffee." The woman whined without taking her eyes off the computer screen.

"I'll get it for you, but we gotta stop someplace so I can get a few things"

The hands, one real and the other metal and plastic prosthetic, clacking on the keyboard stopped and a spectacled face looked up.

"What do you need?"

"Like five notebooks, I think the printer at the house is out of ink, and more post-its."

The hands didn't return to flying across computer keys. The older woman grinned.

"And highlighters."

The teen rolled her eyes and spun on the chair, it gave a poof and went down as low as it could go.

"Yeah…and highlighters."

They sat in a quiet-esque drone accompanied by whirs from the computers and beeps from the lab stations and the printing sounds of fax machine rollers and teeth on a highlighter cap, both too tired to type up labs or get up to take a shower and pack.

"Hey Mur?"

"Yeah?"

"We forgot to call the oil guy."

The older woman stopped all motion, sat back, let out an aggravated whoosh of breath, and scrubbed her face with the heels of her hands.

"Shit."

"Yeah. How am I suppose to shower tonight with no hot water?"

"You'll just have to sponge bathe."

The teen was about to say something snarky and less than pleasant but the overhead PA system chimed up.

"Miranda Benic call extension nine. Miranda Benic call extension nine."

"Who's line is that?" The woman shifted papers around looking for a copy of the call sheet.

The teen look at the office list next to the phone printed on blush colored paper marked with addendums and edits and more than one oddly placed scratch and snitch sparkle stickers.

The woman sighed heavily and fell back limply in her chair unable to find the needed article.

"Dr. Coug." The room's younger occupant answered without looking up.

"Oh. He probably tried to fax me your physical and realized he doesn't know my extension or anyone else's and called the office to page me because he's too lazy to take the elevator down and just give it to me himself…-"

She trailed off when the teen looked up in the middle of her unbecoming rant.

"Listen, Lo I gotta do this and finish up my stuff. So take a shower, pack, get breakfast, and bring me coffee. We'll leave at eleven-thirty so we can get your stuff."

"What are we taking?"

"Something loud and obnoxious and gas guzzling. You know something to hit small children with. Overkill."

"You better bring some good and groovy tunes for the road."

"Leave or I'll bring the soundtrack to Cabaret." The older woman smiled across the desk.

The teen spun in three circuits on the chair and made a face where her tongue lolled out of her mouth. She was out of the chair before it stopped spinning and was already shuffling down the hall to the elevator in her fleecy 'frosty the snowman' pajamas when the woman picked up the phone and dialed with a look of exasperation glued to her face.

They both hated the last day of summer vacation.

**********

_(12:38pm)_

Lunch hour; busy, hectic, catastrophic, whatever you thought of calling it he'd already muttered it coupled with hushed, barely audible, obscenities over the phone to one Will Stronghold who kept persisting that everyone come down to have one last midday lunch that was in the Paper Lantern and not in the school cafeteria.

"I'm telling you there are _no_ tables left, come in later. I don't have time to sit down and baby you."

On the other end of the line the other boy tsked in distaste.

"Oh puh-lease like you ever sit down with us anyway, you're always just soooo _busy_."

"It's called having a job Stronghold, try it."

"I have a job"

"Real jobs have benefits and taxes attached not flower arrangements and ribbons."

There was silence behind the bad reception and static and car sounds. He took the moment to run a calloused finger with a badly scuffed nail down the schedule tacked up on the bulletin board in the back of the kitchen. He found his name and flicked his eyes to black lined box that partnered it with his new hours in it.

Mon: 3pm-9pm, Tues: 3pm-9pm,Wed: 5:30pm-9pm, Thurs: OFF, Fri: 5:30pm-11pm, Sat: OFF, Sun: 7am-2pm

He made a displeased sound that was accompanied by the thought that Driver's Ed was going to kill him this year.

"Maj says her and Layla can only come now and Zack has to get his physical later so we're coming now. We'll _wait_ for a table if we have to and we'll leave you alone."

Warren Peace snorted.

Over the phone it translated somewhere between a screw you and a don't bother trying to be funny because you aren't.

"Okay, well_ I'll_ leave you alone, don't know about Maj and Zack though. See ya in about an hour. Bye."

"Yeah, bye."

He hung up the phone with perhaps a bit more force than necessary and pulled the spiral cord hard to remove and curly tangle kinking it up.

His fingers tensed with the urge to crack his knuckles and the urge to crack his neck and back followed predictably. He got all his fingers, both knuckles on each but his neck refused to crack and his back when he bent it backwards only gave the smallest driest sound when he twisted it side to side.

A pan clattered to the tile floor somewhere closer to the dining room than to him with all the intensity of a bomb filled with car alarms.

He'd only come into the kitchen for the phone call and somehow between the short walk from table to bulletin board he'd lost his rag. He nicked one from a rapidly filling sink when the person doing the dishes, the new guy, someone that was in one of his classes a few years ago, wasn't looking.

The kid turned back while he was dipping the rag into the sink to get it wet. He rung it out, the kid looked at him.

"So Stronghold's coming in?"

"Yeah."

"That kid's here way too much."

"We're here way too much."

The kid laughed, he thought his name was Adam or Alex or something that started with an A and he knew neither Adam or Alex was right and couldn't even think of a name that rhymed with the kid's name.

Warren hadn't meant it as a joke but still the kid shook his head like it was and returned to the dishes he was supposed to be washing.

Increasing his pace he knew he shouldn't have kept Stronghold on the phone for so long or even stopped to talk to Adam, or Alex, or A-mystery.

He grinned at his last thought thinking it was a good joke. Witty but not something most people would get, his kind of joke really, jokes that we're either to smart or to mean to be funny, the type of joke that really wasn't very funny at all.

It was too hot and too sticky in the kitchen, too full of smells and starchy air.

While he was only a passable cook himself he still knew enough to know most foods were not to be served until all the steam coming off of it while cooking went from greasy smoke to cloudlike, he couldn't blame the chef, they were out-numbered by suburban eater-outers by at least ten to one at lunch hours, it was hard to stick to quality when quantity was the main issue.

That was one job he would not be glad to get slammed with. There was cooking to put food on the table and the there was cooking to 'put food on the table.' He enjoyed cooking at home but the single parent paycheck situation did segue nicely into the name-brand and fresh food department.

He was lucky to get knock-off Fruit Loops for breakfast in the morning with what his mother made. Inactive Super Women didn't make as much as they used to.

When he got to the dining room and saw the carnage he half-wished he'd stayed on the phone.

The first table: A battleground of balled up straw wrappers, wet napkins with spit out gum inside, and a large spill of coffee and duck sauce.

The second table: A war zone of knocked over vanilla milkshake (he wondered to himself how that went with General Pow's chicken) and noodles somehow crammed into the wedge between booth seat and booth back.

The third table: A holocaust of smashed fortune cookies under a layer of Pepsi, soy sauce drizzled onto the floor from the booth seat, and more than one piece of gum tucked into the napkin holder.

People were pigs.

The dishes clinked dangerous together as he threw them as hard as he could without breaking them into the grey dish bin, though he wasn't above admitting he might have chipped a few since the restaurant got them ten for a dollar at a Chinese warehouse whose proprietor was someone or other's Chinese cousin or brother or nephew.

He took the trip to drop the bin off at the sink A-mystery manned and went to get a mop.

It was 18 hours and 28 minutes before school started the next day, 7 hours and 23 minutes until his shift was over, and 58 minutes until his break.

He hoped Magenta had an extra cigarette, or five.

**********

_(1:44pm)_

She fumbled with her keys, the ridges kept catching on the plastic bags as she tried to maneuver them out of her pocket and she was becoming both agitated and distracted by the metal on her new spiral notebooks slicing through the bag.

Hefting the quickly going faulty plastic bag she distangled her keys from pocket lint and spare change and got the right one in the lock. It didn't want to turn, it wanted to stick, she jiggled the knob and it gave. It always had been a bit tricky. She opened the door just a bit and kicked it the rest of the way, careful to not shove too hard with her foot and knock the knob through the wall.

Navigating left through the archway and into the living room, through the connected dining room, and finally past the half-wall that obscured part of the kitchen she threw the bags heavily onto the kitchen table only to have them slide on the placemats, folding them with a slam against the wall that framed the table.

Backtracking to the front door she watched for a moment the older woman grab and lift bags from the back of the borrowed company Excursion. She grabbed the bags left at the door.

Back in the kitchen she extracted cereal and soda and boxes of pasta and jars of dill and 'bread and butter' pickles and a carton of no name Indian reservation cigarettes and various other foodstuffs and various other non-foodstuffs that included poptarts, disposable Bic razors, ketchup, cheap shampoo, and coffee with accompanying coffee filters.

Plastic bags were ridiculous.

The older woman had a rant for the occasion of plastic bags. Said rant included talking fast and loud about how plastic bags were floppy and flopped the food just bought at the supermarket that wanted to save a fraction of a penny by switching to plastic bags around the car and then how said supermarket also lowered the temperature and the lighting in the store to also save another fraction of a penny and she could tell because it felt colder in the supermarket on the day they gave her floppy bags and she had to strain her eyes to see the special red tag special's on the products on sale in the supermarket on the day it decided to give her floppy bags and so on and so forth.

While arranging the different colored boxes of cereal and breakfast foods in the cabinet and setting the jars inside the empty fridge on the shelves built into the door and throwing plastic tubs of raspberry sherbet along with frozen waffles on the shelves in the freezer the teen sang a few lines of the chorus of a Bing Crosby song that she couldn't remember the name of.

She closed the freezer as the older woman came in.

She went to the table to pile four bottles of soda into her hands and arms and opened the fridge again with her foot and lined the top of the crisper with them. Milk, cranberry juice, Canada Dry, Coke, half-and-half, and orange juice went on the top shelf.

Hostess coffeecakes, English muffins, butter, and creamcheese went on the second.

Ketchup, pickles, metal rolls of Pillsbury scones, mustard, maple syrup, and assorted jams and sauces went into the door.

Everything was put away in a timely manner.

The cleaning supplies went under the kitchen sink except for an extra bottle of Windex that went in the bathroom with the toothpaste, toilet paper, and soap.

"Lo, when you get a minute I need help getting the suitcases out of the car and then we have to go and get the towels and sheets and curtains and vacuum out. When you get a minute though."

"We cooking tonight?"

The older woman hung her keys on one of the hooks on the red and white ceramic rooster bust hanging on the wall next to the laundry room door.

"No. We'll get something." She looked over the sink and out the window into the backyard wistfully.

The teen pretended not to notice.

"Wanna go sit in the backyard and put on the records?"

The teen crumpled plastic bags and maneuvered around the woman to get to the drawer they kept plastic bags in while thinking of an answer.

"After we get the curtains up and the beds made and vacuum and air everything out then I'll go out." She answered.

The older woman shrugged and went over to the phone and pressed the flashing red sideways triangle that denoted 'play' and told the teen they had messages.

The answering machine tinged on with a metal-like and robotic voice. "Two new messages. Sunday: 'Hey Loooooo-lita it's Maj, just wondering if you got back yet. Okay, guess not. We're all going to bother War at work on Tuesday meet us if you can, I could pick you up if you want to come. Gimme a ring when you can. Bye.' End of message. One new message. Tuesday: 'Hi, this message is for Dolores. Hey it's Layla it's almost 10…am, just wanted to see how you're doing and if you want me and Magenta to stop by at your bus stop tomorrow or if you're meeting us at our's. Magenta wants me to ask if you got a car which I guess would mean you wouldn't be at your or our bus stop tomorrow and I'm rambling right? I know. Sorry. Um, just give me a call back when you can, if you can't get me at home I'm already out with Magenta and the guys maybe so just call her cell phone and let me know. Okay, thanks. Bye. Oh! And I hope you had a good summer! See you in school! Bye.' End of final message."

The older woman looked at the teen. "Popular, all summer, two messages."

"Shut up. Go get the vacuum."

"You get the vacuum, _Dolores_."

"Don't be mean, she likes to use full names on people's answering machines."

"I wasn't making fun of _her_."

The teen rolled her eyes and walked through the arch connected the kitchen to the hallway and out of earshot.

**********

_(3:24pm)_

It had calmed down.

Not by much but by enough.

Parents of kids going to school the next day were less likely to take their kids out for a night of food and fun if it meant they wouldn't get up when the alarm went off in the morning and then miss the bus which would leave said parents the only ones able to drive them to school in the morning, and that was only if their kids went to normal school.

If you had a kid that went to Sky High and your kid missed the bus to Sky High they we're grounded for the day. Figuratively and literally.

The volume had died down but the orders coming in had not and they influx of phone-ins left the one full time chef and the one part-timer frazzled and stuck to an assembly line rhythm of cranking out food at a pace better suited for Riverdance than Chinese take-out.

He had been on phone duty but his break had come and was passing in what very different circumstances would have been blissful slowness. It was now passing, while he was in the company of Will Stronghold and Zack 'Attack' Zane while Ethan went to get straws and napkins and the girls dawdled in the bathroom primping and preening and doing everything besides actually peeing, in excruciating slowness.

"So then I go like you know how I do when I say something I gotta say man that, you know, 'yo pops let's not get hasty with the training cause I gotta go lounge on the sunny side of the sand and scope some groovy chicks', because you know man that Zack Attack is all about the groovy chicks. Yo, War you hear me, now I know _you_ know what I'm saying about groovy chicks. I mean you got that one you go off with everyday, you still talking to her because, ya know, if you're not I'm all over getting her digits. You know invite her to the light show, girls dig it. I would kno…-"

"Shut up Zack." Magenta announced her return and slid in hard enough to slam him against the window and rattle the red wooden Buddha decoration and potted bamboo on the low window ledge.

"Speaking of far-out ladies…" He continued not feeling abused in the slightest.

"Yeah, yeah. Save it glow-stick. So who we talking 'bout. Whose this groovy chick of War's that I don't know about?" She batted her eyes across the table and took an exaggerated sip of soda that made Will laugh outrageously.

"Maj?" The boy decked out like an American flag asked.

"Yah-huh?" She more hummed than answered in words around her straw.

"Where's Lay?"

"Got lipgloss on her shirt had to tide-to-go it out. OCD you know, funny disease process. Who are talking about."

"Dolly the doll, your totally groovy gal pal. Likes the school scene waaay too much, but still stays funky fresh and freshly fridge-like." Zack answered while taking a spoonful of noodle to the point of fruition that was his mouth.

"Gawd…Zaaaaaack. Don't call her that. Name's Lo not Dolly or Doll or 'ice queen' or…whatever, I'm going to go get Layla because you're being a dickbag." She slid back out the booth and did an eye-roll pertaining to the blonde boy for Will and Warren's benefit as she walked towards the little girl's room.

"Jeez, what did I do?"

"Nothing, you're just normally a bag of dicks I think. Her name's really Dolores, right? Huh? Warren?" Will looked to the other boy leaning back against the leather of the booth, his head reclined back. Eyes closed and busy concentrating on being anywhere else than where he really was at the moment.

"Yeah, Dolores." He finally said opening his eyes to the ceiling fan.

His mind drifted off from the following line of conversation because of A-Mystery calling out a phone order to the cook: "Beef Teriyaki no veggies, double sauce, double beef, pint white, pint chick, Cali roll, hot crab, two miso, last four: 5025 ."

He knew the order by heart, he could pick it up like a dog picked up radio signals, instantly.

She always ate the same thing.

* * *

The door to the ladies room slammed shut with the threat of violence behind the forceful swing.

"The boys?" Asked the redhead, her mane of hair covering her face and torso as she poked at the pink spot on her breast pocket.

"Yeah, the boys." Answered the other girl. She hopped onto the sinks, purple strands flicking across her brow.

"What'd they do?" The stain did not want to come out of the starched white cotton but still she tried futilely to elbow grease and tide-to-go it out.

"Getting hothead toasty, ya know the usually. Talking shit and not knowing he's doing it." She took in the ends of her purple streaks, she tsked.

"What's wrong?" The other girl asked lifting her head and pushing her hair with her forearm with a wave and a swoosh of red.

"My hair is total splits-ville."

"No, I meant what did he say?"

The girl not obsessed with stain fighting leaned back tipping her head against the mirror and bumping the leather soles of her boots together.

"Calling Lo dolly, and frigid and just being all around d-bag-like without knowing it which makes it worse because he doesn't get that he's being like that even after you tell him."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

The redhead placed her elbows on the other girl's knees and bowed forward a bit tilting her head to the left to look in the mirror obscured behind her friend.

"I was kind of hoping she'd just show up, but kind of late now for that to happen. I mean I called and everything but she didn't call back. She hasn't been back all summer."

"Yeah, bummer."

"Pfft."

The girl perched on the sink snapped her neck up and rolled her eyes.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

The redhead grinned up at the other girl.

"Nothing, just that you're a moody baby." She reached behind he companion and with a quick hand turned the facet for cold water forward.

"Ahhhh. Shit! That's cold!"

The sink became a bad place for one's backside to be and following that the redhead wasn't quite fast enough to be able to dodge the cupped hands that flung water in her direction.

**********

_(5:02pm)_

The older woman had rolled the old record player, made sometime between 1930 and right about the time when there was still no such thing as color TV, out into the backyard.

She'd done it herself because she knew the teen didn't like to go into the room where it was kept.

They dragged over the set of iron french château-esque recliners made in a garden style and pulled out the faded pink and cream colored stripped cushions that went with the rusted relics.

Bobby Darin wailed out 'Beyond the Sea' at them behind a layer of age and crackle static.

The teen went back inside to grab at and distribute sloppily the pints and quarts of beef teriyaki and white rice and chicken fried rice and miso soup and little deep fried chip things and spicy crab sushi and halves of California rolls onto chipped and heat cracked, from the dishwasher, dishes.

Things were laid out onto a metal tray with an exaggerated lip around the edge that kept spills contained and left the bottom a horrible sticky mess if a glass toppled to its side while being carried.

Silverware and cheap ninety-nine cent napkins and the little twenty ounce bottles of soda the older woman bought from the restaurant while standing at the register waiting for her food to come out of the kitchen.

When she brought it out she set it on the table-like stool between the lounge chairs.

"So how many pairs of socks are you ruining now?" The older woman didn't open her eyes, her head was tilted back in relaxation.

The teen had on two pairs, the first a pair of the type of socks that were too fuzzy and too soft to be made by any natural means, in her mind she liked to believe they must have been made by wizards or a mad scientists, they were smushed against her skin with the another pair, plain white socks that should never ever be worn in the company of people if one wanted to keep their dignity, but she wasn't about to tell the woman that.

Between grass stains and cold feet the choice was obvious.

"Shut up." She flopped onto the empty chair, the back went up when her bottom hit the edge of the chair. She almost fell into the grass and dirt.

A snort came from then teen's right.

"Serve's you right. That's karma kid."

Righting herself and the chair the girl laid back and grabbed her plate, shoving food in her mouth at a rapid pace.

Between scarfing bites of food and breathing she made faces at the older woman's face, not that she could see but it was still amusing for the teen to do so.

"Lo, you are so unadjusted to normal life, with your socks and bad manners. I think we have to keep you away from the base for a bit. All those superheroes in one place is like a Petri dish of stupid and rude."

"Am not. I'm adjusted. I eat four food groups and look both ways before crossing the street and do my homework."

"You eat ketchup, noodles, peanut butter, and drink cranberry juice. You look both ways and could still get run over in a parking lot at Macy's and you do your homework a week before it's due. You are not well-adjusted."

The teen finished eating what she wanted and leaned back closing her eyes.

"Whatever, I subvert the dominant paradigm of reality. If the apocalypse comes, beep me. I'm taking a nap. Put on some Noel Coward will ya?"

She could hear the older woman huff in exaggerated dismay and aggravation.

"You going to call your friend's back?"

"Later. I'm going to take a nap when I go in. Noel Coward please."

The older woman got up with a groan and switched the record.

'World Weary' got hummed to, off key by the teen.

"I think you should call them both back." The older woman replied her own question a minute later.

"I think I'll…'assume a hor-r-r-rizooooontal stature, I want to get riiiiiiight back to nature and rela-a-a-ax.'" The teen answered with the last few lines of the record and peaked opened one eye to catch the reaction she would otherwise have missed from the older woman.

It was not a please reaction but a hilarious one nonetheless to the teen.

She smiled, got up, and set the record to play again much to her companions chagrin.

Taking her pack out of the unzipped pocket of her fleece pull-over she lit up and puffed out the first inhale through her nostrils and let the rest waft out of her mouth with a deft push of her tongue.

"So were they all there?"

"Was _who_ 'all there'?" The older woman was busy negotiating food into little groups on her plate and fiddling with the cap on her soda bottle.

"You know at the restaurant."

The woman let out a displeased sound when her soda bubbled over the rim, she held it away from her and over onto the grass. Setting it down and wiping it with a napkin she turned.

"I think I saw Magenta, she still has purple hair right?"

"Yeah, last time I saw her."

"I think Layla was playing pinball with some boy and I saw what's his name moping. He's still working there?"

"Yeah, Warren, I guess."

"I think I met his mother once, that was years ago though. What's she doing now?"

The teen sat down and pressed her thumb against her cigarette's filter.

"Don't know, I think she went inactive though. He doesn't mention her that much."

To her right the older woman started to eat.

With a noodle escaping her mouth the older woman continued undisturbed by the piece of food on her lip.

"Yes. I did meet her and I met his father too, while they were still married. He looks more like his mother though, handsome I mean. His father had a kind of feminine look to him. Like a cat, no not a cat just the whole gaunt cheeks and nice eyes and slim kind of looks. I remember. The whole female portion of my lab staff couldn't get any work done that day, missed our deadline on the genome project. That man was a fox."

The teen's gaze became fixated on the blood blister on her thumb that she'd obtain from a wayward highlighter click earlier in the day. She poked it while taking a quick drag that she didn't even bother letting into her lungs.

"Warren's pretty foxy himself. And the last stall in the girl's bathroom say he's '_**HOT**_,' but I guess that's supposed to be a pun or something."

The older woman chuckled.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just you."

"Uh-huh."

The older woman kept looking at her so the teen took her thumb to her mouth and popped the blister between her teeth. Blood bubbled out and frosted. The teen sighed out smoke.

"I think you should invite Magenta over again, I like her and the redhead. Layla that's her name, right?"

"Yeah, Layla. Yeah maybe I'll invite them over this weekend or something. Maybe Friday if I'm not too tired from driver's ed. get them to give me a ride here after it's done. Or something."

With a loud slurp of noodles, the bit previous stuck to her lip included, the woman nodded.

"I'll make macaroni and cheese. Magenta likes my macaroni and cheese. Me and her will eat it. Maybe I'll let you have some."

Rolling her eyes and picking at the cellophane of a fortune cookie the teen made a face.

"Magenta's a fucking garbage disposal, she'll eat anything. Your macaroni and cheese tastes like dog feces."

"Brat."

"Shut up and eat your noodles."

Sitting in relative silence for a few minutes with only the sound of clinking silverware scraping against plates and the whoosh of loosening soda bottle caps they watched the laundry on the back line swing lazily back and forth.

An empty grey clothes bucket fell over onto it's side and the plastic flower basket with a hook that they'd put on the line to hold clothespins swayed dangerously next to the towels.

It was pleasant but the breeze that was warm to the older woman made the teen hug her sweater closer to her body, it was getting chilly, for her at least.

"You know Lo, I was thinking that maybe this year instead of gas heat we could renovate to putting in an electric water heater and just use the wood stove for out in the living room this year, I could go out and buy you some space heaters and that might be better. More cost efficient you know."

It sounded like a good idea but that wasn't the main concern for the teen. The concern was how long she'd be without hot water.

"How long will it take to do all that?"

"Like a week and a half. They can take out what we've got pretty fast. It's just getting them here that takes so long. So we'll do that then?"

With a sigh the teen got up from her spot, intent on going over to the laundry to find a few dry towels so she could go take a sponge bath.

"Yeah we'll do it. I'll just freeze my tits off until then. I'm gonna to grab some towels and throw then in the dryer with the blankets. You mind if I use the kitchen?"

"No, go head. get naked where you want I've got work to do in my room later anyway. Throw my lab coat in the dryer to. I have to go in tomorrow to get some files and check on some samples."

"Okay."

The teen walked off to the line. Taking a moment to push her cigarette into the dirt she couldn't help but feel like she was missing out on all the fun.

If she wanted to she could throw on some shoes and just go and hang out but that was if she'd wanted to, she didn't know why she didn't want to.

It would have been funny if she wasn't so debilitatingly and fakely apathetic at the moment, part of her wanted to be bummed out. It was like a stupid playground game with made-up rules and some dirt, a rock, and maybe an old shoe that little kids played on an old blacktop basketball court at recess. Pointless make-believe, fun in a weird way like being sick or crying about nothing or trying to go back to a dream after you've already waken up.

**********

_(8:00pm)_

Officially his shift ended in fifteen minutes.

Unofficially the boss's husband had told him ten minutes ago to just clock out and he'd close for the night.

Technically employees were not allowed to hang out in the parking lot behind the restaurant smoking cigarettes.

In reality him and Magenta had been sitting on the delivery stoop for twenty minutes chain-smoking.

Everyone else had left in a time worn cycle that they'd all been through too many times.

First: Zach had to get his school physical.

Then: Ethan had a curfew.

After: Layla had summer assignments to print out and allocate into different colored folders and label with sticky notes.

Finally: Will had laundry to fold, a room to clean, dishes to do, a new dog to give a bath, and a mother who just didn't quit.

Warren had a mother who did company finances and whose work hours went from infinitely to beyond.

Magenta had a dad who pulled night shifts at Maxville General as a nurse practitioner who did admissions and tried to make ends meet.

It was close to enough to say that neither would be going to home for any other reason than a shower and a four hour nap before school.

They'd probably hang out on his front lawn, lounging on old beach blankets smoking and maybe eating whatever leftover scraps were salvageable from the quarts of rice and dinner specials that was left on the takeout counter for anyone who wanted them, they'd do that and then he'd drive her home and they'd see each other in a few hours right before first period along with everyone else and it'd be the start of one more year at Sky High where he didn't know what he was doing or how long doing nothing would take before he finally got _it_.

Got a spark or a b-i-n-g-o moment that showed him what to do and what to want and where to go and how to get there.

"Too bad she couldn't come." She exhaled smoke with more whoosh than practice ease up into the spill of crackly yellow light from the broken twitchy fixture above them. Moths hit it with pings and flew to and fro and back again.

He thought it was a good thing it wasn't a candle, otherwise Darwinism would take over their lifecycles for them.

"Ye…-, huh?"

She grabbed the cell phone taking up the rest of the space to her right side on the edge of the stoop and slid up the cover.

The cigarette between her lips hung at an angle against the rim of her lip and the thin line the tops of her bottom teeth made. Ash fell between her legs onto the cement, she lifted a foot and slammed a boot heel on the asphalt of the parking lot in time with a click on the keys.

She spoke around her smoke.

"I left a message on her machine a few days ago and she sent me this at like six."

She brandished her phone at him, the florescent filter of light in his eyes stung.

There wasn't a text but a ting came out of the phone's ear piece.

Her forehead crinkled. She turned the phone away from him and pressed the speaker button.

'Hey. Just got back. I can't stop in later but I'll see you at the bus tomorrow. Tell everyone I said hi. See ya tomorrow hun.'

"She says hi." She joked with a grin that made her cigarette's cherry fall onto the cement.

"Shit, hold on." She shoved her phone at him and relit herself with the lighter sitting next to her pack of Marlboro Ultra-Light 100's.

He looked at the voicemail alert and stared at the name and number of the caller, fascinated.

"She's busier this year." He held out the phone.

"Yeah, she didn't come back at all this summer." She rubbed at a soy sauce stain on her jeans.

"What do you think she's been doing?" She said licking her finger and putting it to the stain still holding onto the phone, it clattered out of her grip and onto the ground.

"Fuck." She picked it up and put it down behind her going back to the stain.

"I don't know." He answered.

"Yeah, me neither. Glob. Guards. probably already signed her up for rotations and everything already, she's probably got a costume and a name and a choice sidekick all lined up." A purple streak of hair caught on her 'lavender luxury' sparkle lipgloss and smeared the stickiness across her cheek and chin when the wind blew in another direction.

He snorted.

"Probably not."

He hoped not anyway.

"Yeah, I know. Probably not." She meant it.

She took one last down to the filter drag and flicked the butt out into the vacant parking lot.

In the background a car door slammed shut and an ignition sputtered to life.

The boss was leaving.

The roll of tires over dry, cracked, asphalt signaled his departure.

"I got accepted to my first choice, early decision. Well…, like early, early, early decision. As long as my GPA doesn't suddenly plummet." She said pulling out and lighting a new cigarette.

He was down to his last one, he lit up with a snap.

"That's good."

"Yeah. Jeez, we're getting old Sparky."

"Tell me about it sister." He deadpanned and tried not to grin.

She laughed and coughed in the same breath. A smoker's laugh or maybe just an amused hack.

"You know what you gonna do yet?"

He took and drag and stared at the orange lace tip of his cigarette and tapped off the ash.

"No."

"You're screwed."

She smiled sideways at him.

"I know."

He smirked at the ground.

They both laughed.

**********

_(10:44pm)_

Her nap didn't last nearly as long as she would have liked. She'd called both of the girls earlier, before her nap, and neither had picked up.

Slowly after she'd woken up and checked her own cell for voicemails that weren't there she realized you could tell a lot about a person by their phone habits.

Layla was the type of girl that liked to worry more than anything else. She didn't know she liked it but it was just something she craved. That's why she'd call you to see how you were and leave you a message that said something like 'call me back when you get a chance, let me know what's up and how you are and yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah.' and then leave her cell phone off when she went out so even when you tried to call back and left fifteen messages she never got them until three days later when she turned her phone back on and then figured it was okay to not mention that you called fifteen times and she got them and so on and so forth.

Magenta was the type of girl who liked to send everyone chain texts and never left messages and called to really see how you were because she was bored or out of cigarettes and never because she was actually worried, if she was she come over to you house with a carton of cheap smokes and the answers to the mad science homework and possibly a movie with a lot of nudity and gratuitous dismemberment.

As for what type of girl she was, she couldn't tell you, all she could say was that she always felt like an asshole if she didn't return messages, hated texting, and somehow always got other people's machines or called them when it was just about time for them to have dinner.

But beyond all that she thought, slowly while coming out of her cotton head and pudding brain 'just woke up' state of mind, that she smelled really bad.

She got up and wished she had left her socks on because the wood floor was cold. She grabbed the pajamas she hadn't bothered to take out of her duffel bag and the towels she'd thrown on the bedroom floor after she'd grabbed them from the dryer. She open the door and turned left and then left again and knocked on the first door one would see when they went through the front door. She knocked.

A muffled 'yeah' came through the wood.

"Don't come in the kitchen, okay Mur?"

"Yeah, no problem. Tell me when you're done."

The teen went to the bathroom and reached into the tub for soap and bottles of cheap shampoo and conditioner.

Going into the kitchen she boiled three pots of water on the electric burners of the stove. It took ten minutes for them to bubble and for her to pour them into the empty sink without scalding herself.

Pushing the dish-rack of drying dishes all the way to left she looked out at the already dark back yard. Far back near the line she could make out the shapes of a troupe of deer, she doubted that they would peep on her with much interest.

Discarding her old jeans with the pair of panties that had a tear in the side at the same time and then working her sweater over her head catching her glasses just a bit and having them dig into her the apex of her nose in time with her ratty grey tee-shirt and finally a bra that didn't match anything else that she was wearing she disrobed quickly and with else.

Her skin quickly broke out in little mountains of goose skin. Her knees shivered and her small breasts felt like they'd been shoved in a freezer, she gave a moment of thought to the idea of shoving them into the water but then quickly rationalized that there was nothing pleasant feeling or good looking about 'blistery tits."

She soap up quick, wiped at her skin with violent strokes to get a bit of heat back in her blood, toweled off as fast as she could but not fast enough to avoid being completely devoid of frost, throwing on her robe and husking it off her shoulders she dunked her head into the sink.

The water burned at her temples but she didn't much mind. She lathered and rinsed and didn't repeat.

Her fingers searched for the drain, she pulled her hair up to keep it from getting sucked down. She'd had kept her irrational fear of her hair getting sucked off by hungry kitchen drains that she'd developed around age ten. It was one of those fears right up there with getting her two front teeth knocked off by trying to jump over something and landing on her face. Even thinking about things like that made her feel skeeved.

Wrapping her hair tightly in a towel and shucking up her robe again she very quickly realized she hadn't brought out panties to put on.

"Shit."

She was literally freezing her ass off.

**********

_(11:21pm)_

"How many you got left." He looked up into the porch light from his spot on the steps of his front porch.

The girl on his porch swing wrapped in a worn out picnic blanket he'd salvaged from the behind the driver's seat of his truck let her boot toe scrap the wood underneath her.

"I've got three soldiers left not counting this bullet to the throat."

She tapped the ashes of her cigarette and let the smoke blast through her nose like twin dragons, the air accentuated the blow-out and wafted over and above her eyes. There were no street lights near where he lived, it was a back road and no lights came from the other three houses around his.

He kicked at the planks of the patio step.

"I can bum you a few."

"Thanks. Hey I'll be back, gotta piss."

He nodded and took her cigarette from her catching the filter between his teeth and biting just a bite.

Oral fixation. He'd be damned if he'd admit it though.

Inside the bathroom his female companion flicked on the light, she hadn't bothered with the hallway one because she knew the house inside out. This was not the first summer night they'd spent talking shit on his front porch or front lawn.

Her phone vibrated in her back pocket.

In the same motion of pressing the talk button she unbuckled her belt. She didn't plan to wait to piss just because she was talking on the phone.

The seat was cold.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Maj?"

"Yeah, this you Lo?"

The stream of urine sounded out with a slap against the porcelain of the bowl. She stuck a sharp nail deep into the edge of the toilet paper, it left a moon mark in the soft paper blend of it.

"Yeah, you get my message?"

"Yeah, so you're home and everything?"

"Yeah, got back after noon. Had to get my shit together ya know?"

"Uh-huh, you call Layla?"

"Didn't pick up."

She wiped half-heartedly and yanked up her pants. She flushed and held the phone against her ear with her shoulder. Hopping up on the bathroom counter she played with the facets.

"Are you taking a shit?"

"I was pissing."

"Well remember to wipe from clean to dirty."

Magenta laughed.

"Guess whose bathroom I'm in."

Over the line there were the sounds of another conversation going on and the girl she was talking to became distracted.

There was a muted response of 'no' and 'go away' and 'the deers got a free show' and 'my nipples fell off' the girl in Warren Peace's bathroom quickly found her interest piqued.

"Sorry, whose bathroom? Oh no wait, I know Warren's. That was easy."

"Yeah, no it's okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm in Warren's bathroom we're hanging. So what deers are you talking about and whose nipples are falling off?"

"I had to take a bath in the kitchen sink because we have no hot water and it's very cold in my kitchen and my nipples don't like it."

"You should come over. Warm those nipples up you know what we usually do on a school night."

The girl on the other line laughed weakly.

"Where? Warren's? Ah no."

"Why not and what do you mean 'ah no?' You've got a hot piece of man smuggled up in bed with you or something? Because I'll tell you I don't think men get much hotter than War honey."

Over the phone there was a huffing sound that came clear through into Magenta's ear cavity with vicious intent.

"You're about as articulate as the graffiti in the girl's room at school. Yeah I'm in bed with my 'Frosty the Snowman' jammy jams. Jeez it's fucking cold over here Maj."

"I'll have to send Warren over so you don't get the sniffles."

"Bitch."

"You know you want his _hot _bod."

"I want to rip his skin off and wear it like a bathrobe, roll around in it, get toasty. That's about it, though."

"Sure. You know what they say, it starts with the skin ripping and then quickly moves to bumping uglies."

They both laughed loudly and for a long time.

Shifting against the mirror and putting her boots into the sink basin Magenta smiled.

"You sound tired."

"I am."

"You really aren't going to come over?"

"No. I don't think so."

"Get some sleep. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah, I'll meet you at your bus stop tomorrow."

"No, no. Me and Layla will meet you. Don't worry about it. Go to bed. You're a cranky bitch if you don't fat out fast enough."

With an eye-roll Magenta could almost hear the other girl gave her a curt and good-humored 'goodnight' and hung up.

She put her phone back in her pocket and went back out to the porch flicking off the bathroom light with flourish. When she came back out she found Warren exactly where she left him.

"Guess who called?"

"Who?" He wasn't exactly interested but he humored her.

"Lo."

"What's she doing?"

"Gave a peepshow to some deer, froze her nipples off, probably passed out by now. She was tired."

"You're too funny." he deadpanned.

"I wonder if someone could accidentally get their tongue stuck to her nips. What do you think? That'd ruin the mood of all hot and heavy activities. That'd suck ass."

He rolled his eyes.

She laughed and punched him in the arm.

"You should have been born with a penis Magenta."

"Yeah well you should try to look less interested in her nipples. You're not fooling anyone."

"I like keeping my tongue in my mouth thanks."

"Uh-huh. With an attitude like that you should have been born with a vagina."

He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head, she choked on her cigarette while trying not to laugh at her own stupid joke.

He smiled.

She scowled.

"Maybe _you_ should try to be less interested with her nipples Magenta."

"Yeah, more interested in her abs than her tits anyway. Girl must do five hundred sit-ups a night, I'll tell ya. Too bad she never comes to the beach with us. You could get some excellent imagery."

He ignored her.

"Ah come on, I was joking! Gawd, why don't you just play along for once I get sick of driving the conversation all the time."

"Fine." He answered gruffly.

"Fine?" She questioned while moving down to squat down on his step.

"Yeah. I'll talk."

She made an unconvinced sound.

He grinned in a slanted kind of way.

"Duck."

"Duck?" She questioned with an odd and confused inflection to the one syllable word.

"Goose." He chuckled.

She tapped her boot harshly against his.

"That was not what I meant."

"I know."

The girl lit up a new cigarette, her old one still stuck between the fingers of her male company.

"It's so dark, you can see the stars like magnified times like a bazillion, I dig it."

He looked up over the rim of the porch awning.

"Yeah, like a pool."

"Huh?" She didn't get it.

"It's deep, you could fall in. Like that."

"You're deep." She rolled her eyes.

"I try." he said to her.

"'Falconswift'" he said to the sky.

"What?" She asked not getting it, not that she should, it was a private joke.

"It's from 'Grendel', John Gardner. The Beowulf side-story about Grendel, the monster. The sky is 'falconswift' at night because even though it's so deep you can't fall into it because it's moving away to fast. You get dizzy and tired if you keep trying to jump into it."

He turned while taking a puff.

Her eyes were wide and uncomprehending.

"I think you should be a wayward hermit that dabbles in philosophical thought when you grow up."

He blew smoke out away from her face and thought about it and burst out laughing so suddenly it felt like smoker's cough until his ribs hurt.

It was contagious, she laughed until she accidentally stabbed him in the arm with a lit cigarette, then she laughed harder while he scowled.

When she calmed down and her stomach cramped less brutally she looked in his direction.

"Don't make that face, how are you supposed to pick up chicks with a face like that. You gotta be suave if you want to get a groovy chick like my girl Lolita."

He looked away.

"Why do you call her that." He asked it sadly, like they were talking about something that had a lot of baggage attached to it.

She turned her face away from where his had been a moment ago and looked up into the sky, 'falconswift' she thought to herself.

"You remember that teacher we had at sky high that taught that class about genes and stuff that got transferred to the other school in freshman year, the one that taught the science club because Medulla hates having to do all the science extracurricular stuff?"

"Yeah. The old guy."

"Well, not old. He was like fifty and still scrumdiddledalyumsious if I do say so myself, well Lo had the ho…- I mean the chills for him if you know what I mean. So that's why I call her Lolita. She always said 'if I was ten years older I's hit that sideways.'" She laughed.

"Why is she still friends with you?"

The girl next to him sucked in a angry breath and punched him hard in the ribs.

"_Because_, she's just as mean as me." Suddenly serious she continued softly.

"I don't know maybe I want to be a sort of middleman."

"Middleman in what?"

Tossing his cigarette out onto the driveway he missed the look he was getting thrown.

The girl next to him tossed her's too.

"You are so oblivious Mr. Peace." With a smile she got up and started to walk to his truck.

"What are you doing?"

"Well it's more like what are you going to be doing."

"Which is?"

"Driving me to the Rez to buy smokes. Can't bum off you all the time, gotta stay self-sufficent."

He rolled his eyes.

She cackled like an old woman and grab the keys out of the air that he threw to her.

"You're driving and paying for my gas."

"Gotcha chief."

Getting into the passenger's side it seemed that everything hit him with a substantial weight of something that emptied him out and in response he pressed his cheek against the window looking out at a sky you couldn't get anywhere but where he was right then.

"Falconswift." He said it to no one in particular.

With a rev of the engine the girl about to drive called him a 'dummy.'

He couldn't find it in him to disagree for more than just one reason that he wouldn't have been able to articulate anyway.

* * *

**A/N: **Thanks for reading.


	3. Protein Bases: Prologue Part 2

**Title:** Dishpig and Snowball, Matchstick and Book Monger  
**Author:** grayglube  
**Pairing/Character:** Icegirl/Warren  
**Rating:** M

**Summary:** Life turns out to be more than busing tables and thesis statements, more than dysfunctional behavior and cigarettes on school property, more than superheroes and villains. It's life like microwaved leftovers; a hot skin, a cold center, and a soggy aftertaste.

**Spoilers/Warnings:** None. Post-Movie by two years.

**Chapter:** 3: Protein Bases (Prologue pt. 2)

**A/N: **Thanks for reviewing I appreciate it and also to bring up a quick side-note I want to mention that every other chapter will be an extension of the prologue, so every time there's an update two chapters will go up. I'm not sure whether to make the prologues just from Warren and Lo's point of views or to switch between them and the other characters, if you review make sure to send me some input on that.

* * *

_Nitrogen:__ Component of all proteins, essential in building tissue. Found in nature only to form compounds such as ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, which are transformed by plants and animals into proteins._

_Adenine:__**Purine**__ base that is an essential constituent of DNA and RNA (formula: carbon five, hydrogen five, nitrogen five); 6-aminopurine, crystalline substance; one of the 2 purine bases of DNA and RNA._

_Purine:__ [L. purum, pure and uricus, uric acid] Parent compound of __**purine bases**__**(adenine, guanine**__, __**xanthine**__, __**caffeine**__, and __**uric acid**__. Purines-end products of __**nucleoprotein**__ digestion. They may be synthesized in the body. Break down to form __**uric acid**__. SEE: __**aminoprotein**__; __**oxypurine**__; __**methylpurine**__. _

_Nucleoprotein:__ Combo of one of the proteins w/ __**nucleic acid**__ to form a conjugated protein found in cell nuclei._

_Aminopurine:__ An oxidation product of __**purine**__. Includes __**adenine**__ and __**guanine**__._

_Uric Acid:__ (carbon five, hydrogen four, nitrogen four, oxygen three) Crystalline acid occurring as an end product of __**purine**__ metabolism. Formed from __**purine base**__ derived from __**nucleoproteins**__. Common constituent of urinary and renal calculi and of gouty concentrations._

_Guanine:__ (carbon five, hydrogen five, nitrogen five, oxygen one) An organic compound that occurs as a natural constituent of animal and vegetable nucleic acids. Abundant in liver, muscle, glandular tissue such as pancreas and seed. __**Uric acid**__ is its metabolic end point._

_Theobromine:__ White powder obtained from the plant that chocolate is obtained; dilates blood vessels in the heart and peripherally. Used as mild stimulant and as a diuretic._

_Caffeine:__ Pharmacologic action of it-CNS stimulation, stims. gastric acid and pepsin secretion, elevates fatty acids in plasma, diuretic, increase basal metabolic rate. Toxic effects-insomnia, restlessness, and excitement in early stages, later may progress to mild delirium. Tachycardia, extra systoles, and hypernea may also be present._

_Pyrimidines__: The parent of a group of heterocyclic __**nitrogen**__ compounds, (carbon four, hydrogen four, nitrogen two), including __**uracil**__, __**cytosine**__, and __**thymine**__, some of which are components of __**nucleic acid**__._

* * *

The notebooks were old, old enough that the act of rereading them brought her back to a time that now felt like a different place altogether.

She tried hard to read her own cryptic lettering and abbreviations and arrows and post-its left ten or twenty and in one case even fifty some odd pages forward that were meant to be an addendum on an already too full of pen and scribbles and highlights.

She went back, retracing and rethinking old trains of thought that had been over the rails and off the tracks and over the cliff for much too long already.

Her fingers cramped painfully when she bent them to turn a page, her knees cracked louder than packaging peanuts when she shifted in the chair.

Making a note and dog earring a page she spun and rolled across the room in the chair that wasn't hers, in the house that wasn't hers. Light filtered through the gaps in the blinds, illuminating the room, dust climbed the shafts of light only to fall over and over again. Stretching out a hand she watched her skin brighten and shined and warm in the fragmented skein of sun.

She needed a new pen. Searching through the end table, that wasn't hers, that the phone was on she found a green 'Happy Birthday' pencil with a giant star eraser on the end. The clear thin plasticy foil was coming up at the fold.

Across her mouth there was no thin smile that would denote happy, long lost memories being recovered, instead all there was on her face was black bagged eyes and chapped, raw lips. If she had remained irate as she was when she first entered the house she might have snapped the stupid thing in half, now all she was was tired, much too tired to care.

Rolling back hard enough to take wood off the floor on the way back to the desk that wasn't her's she thought. Hard, mechanical thoughts rolled through her brain in patterns that she was used to from years of laboratory studies and experiments, the clinical rational of a scientist who had the skill and the picture on the box to solve the puzzle but none of the pieces.

She was making due with a mish-mash of old notebooks and stolen hard copy files out of a burned up file cabinet, scorched but not unreadable they were.

She thought while biting pieces off the star eraser. Bad habit, a shared habit. Oral fixation.

She pushed the old memories out of her head and went back to thinking about things that actually mattered.

Caffeine was a given, it would have to be used even if it increased the metabolic rate.

She'd have to find something to synthesize with the uric acid or flush it out or break it down even more or she could neutralize it but it would be the equivalent of basing it out with oven cleaner which _would_ kill her.

After that she could pair it with theophylline which was close enough to the bromine to work and alike enough to the caffeine to synthesize just enough.

The problem was that she needed to base it all out, everything.

Smokers were always closer to acidosis than non-smokers and then with the added acids she'd end up poisoning herself. She needed a base. There was enough time to play around with the electrolytes but she needed the lab samples.

Lab samples in another place that she had no business breaking into.

Even if she got them it wasn't as if she could play scientist on the fold up table in what was _her _'home,' home had a bitter shade of green attached to it.

To herself she thought about what people said about going home. 'You can't.'

She'd considered her options, there weren't many. One: Break into Global Guardians. Two: Break into hospital. Three: Water, massive amounts of it.

Problem: She doubted she could make it to either on the last dregs of syringe doses she had and adding water to her system would just speed up what would happen anyway, faster than a double amount of dosages that she didn't have could fix the problem.

A mental checklist went up on the bulletin board of her brain.

Hospital: best choice. Distraction need.

Uniform Shop: phonebook in drawer underneath phone.

Cash: bank ATM right by the pancake place.

Transportation: he always kept his keys in the kitchen.

I.D.: need to go back to my place.

And god damn it she hated playing the hero.

There weren't any of those left.

The world was left with the cigarette butts and coffee dregs of the 'inactives' pool, the people who had the goods but didn't want to sell them, the heroes who left the business or never got into it in the first place, around to save the world.

The Sick and the 'Getting Better' was all there was. No more heroes, no more sidekicks. The diseased and the evolving.

Last she heard Layla was the worst off. Will wasn't far behind.

Ethan was out, which was great for him but she was sick of all his 'ascended' shit.

Fog and water vapor did not equal greater state of being. Farts were air and water vapor too last time she checked. And trace elements, she couldn't forget about those. Every was turning out to be trace elements to her these days.

Zack has left, really before it had all began. It had nothing to do with him, he always had been oblivious. She wouldn't hold it against him that he was in one of the few 'safe' zones left and didn't feel the need to visit the fall-out zone.

Magenta had left her house in a hurry. She'd left to late to be granted the same status Zack had in her mind.

Magenta was involved, despite not wanting to stick around. Sometimes it was better to watch your own back when everyone else is getting stabbed in their's and she couldn't say she wouldn't have done the exact same thing.

And then there was the only other one she'd known stuck around.

He'd been here. In this house.

Magenta was their friend, though she couldn't say exactly how close he and Magenta had become. She'd left, it wasn't her business anymore.

She told herself that while planning out how exactly to play one last game of hero that involved getting him out.

She told herself it was a two for one deal, get what she needed and get him out.

At the time she wasn't sure if both were the same thing, maybe it the idea of him that made her angry and nostalgic and less tired, who knew what he would be like now, years after she'd left. It was the three-and-a-half seconds rule. Her laugh was audible at the thought of the shared joke that was just between her and Magenta once.

The loudness of the outburst her throat had made got her to wince. Maybe it was too quiet in the house that wasn't hers, maybe it was because she was the only one left to laugh at the shared joke.

In that moment she'd realized she was never not going to go and get him or to try to fix things, it hit her like a dirt clod in the mouth that sprayed everything everywhere; every thought, every feeling, every plan.

It had never been _not _going to happen.

The rescue.

The plan.

The science.

The solution.

The saving.

She got up and closed the books, she put them in a bag with every one of those thoughts and let her brain run on empty, let every thought just fly away with all the hard concentration that had went into rereading the notes.

Magenta hadn't left that long ago. Less than a month. The electricity was still on. There was still oil in the furnace. It was warm, not like her own makeshift lab, she couldn't risk giving out her information by using her credit card, all her bank accounts had been marked with a red flag, government agency stuff. Global Guardians stuff.

She stopped those thoughts before they got her too frustrated to think. She let nostalgia wash over her. It wasn't the soothing balm she was hoping for, but it was enough.

He'd been in this house, tiny touches everywhere. The dishtowel under the draining board, his mother had always done that. The cigarettes in the ashtray, he smoked them down to the filter like she did, Magenta smoked them halfway. The way papers were paper-clipped together on the coffee table, from the side not the top.

She thought about the two of them. Warren and Magenta.

Friends?

Lovers?

Hero and Sidekick?

The house suddenly and very quickly seemed like a playground of lost conversations and situations that meant nothing anymore.

Had he sat in that chair?

Had he smoked while staring out the bay window, hand of the wall, thumb rubbing a mark onto the glass?

Had he made coffee in the kitchen?

Had he slept in her bed?

Had he stood in front of the bathroom mirror brushing his teeth?

It didn't matter, Magenta, him, herself. She'd left, he'd stayed, Magenta stayed. Life went on. Didn't matter who it went on with. Irritation rose in her belly and up into her throat like heartburn.

It wasn't just those two but it was everyone else and their cozy domesticality, even Layla and Will's dysfunctional kind before either had gotten too diseased to be around anyone.

It was when she emptied herself of every thought and every feeling that she knew fully that some people were just meant to be alone, that sometimes people weren't made to be social creatures or maybe it was certain types of people and 'sometimes' had nothing to do with it. There were the ones who don't need and the one's who do. She knew where she stood, a _don't _to the end. Warren, she had the feeling, despite all his stupid habits and need to socialize and _be there_, was a _don't_ too.

Wolves couldn't be lapdogs.

And there weren't enough wolves to form packs.

It was perhaps easier to stay than to leave but then what was she doing now? Staying not leaving. She'd never really left, but her perception of where she was had changed.

She took the pack that was lying on the coffee table, they weren't his. She was oddly disappointed.

They were Marlboro UltraLight 100's, she grinned, Magenta was getting old. Only women feeling their age smoked those. That or she had had a coupon.

They tasted like air.

Ash fell on her knuckle, it sizzled and frosted.

Her joints hurt horribly, she'd take a shower set to scalding then she'd nap under all the blankets and sheets she could find.

Hunger gnawed at her too. The fridge had ketchup, flat soda, and cold cuts that had gelatinous edges from preservatives that had aged for one too many weeks.

She smoked until she was just about to a fiberglass and chemical filter then ashed onto the carpet one last time. She clutched the cigarette in her fist, it sent out one last dying sputtering puff as it iced over.

It was time to go back to real life.

Plans.

Notes.

An empty house.

Meds to keep her joints from exploding because of the pressure of the ice behind them.

Life went on, people needed to get rescued, the people who didn't want to be hero's had to become what they didn't want to be, involved.

She wasn't the one who'd dug that hole but if she hadn't jumped in then she'd have gotten buried under all the dirt getting thrown out of it.

All she hoped for was that by the time she'd figured everything out and saved everyone that the tunnel behind her wasn't caved in

Hero's that are forced to be hero's were never considered hero's after it was all over.

Only the idiots that volunteered got that privilege, if they didn't die first.

She hadn't wanted to volunteer and she certaintly didn't want to die.

Then she'd get nothing.

She thought it as if she'd had anything gain anyway.

There was a terrible price and a terrible type of freedom in doing nothing, doing nothing apparently had a time limit that she hadn't been aware of.

She hoped she could fix things with old notebooks and late nights and cigarettes, somewhere she acknowledged, sadly, that they were past that point by a few hundred miles.

* * *

**A/N:** Thanks for reading.


	4. Almosts and Happenstances

**Title:** Dishpig and Snowball, Matchstick and Book Monger  
**Author:** grayglube  
**Pairing/Character:** Icegirl/Warren  
**Rating:** M

**Summary:** Life turns out to be more than busing tables and thesis statements, more than dysfunctional behavior and cigarettes on school property, more than superheroes and villains. It's life like microwaved leftovers; a hot skin, a cold center, and a soggy aftertaste.

**Spoilers/Warnings:** None. Post-Movie by two years.

**Chapter:** 4: Almost and Happenstances

**A/N: **Enjoy.

* * *

_September 9__th__ (Wednesday)_

_5:44am_

The teen woke up blearily with her eyes searching for the clock a foot over the bed on the edge of the dresser. Scooping it into her hand and pressing a thumb against the nub on the bottom brought the blue LCD light to life. 5:44. Blankets flipped towards the foot of the bed and a torso went up and to the side as quick as whiplash.

"Fuck."

She'd meant to get up at a quarter to, enough to grab less than three hours of sleep and have a half-hour to eat and pull on the clothes left on the lounger that made the small room smaller than 'cozy' was meant to be.

Greatly appreciative of her foresight to shower before she went to bed at a bit past 2am she yanked on her new underwear that were surprisingly attractive despite the fact that she'd only paid fifteen dollars for the bra and panty combo at seventy-five percent off and new jeans that gave her a saggy looking ass. She was far past the Jr. High idealism where everyone broke out their best for the first day of school.

No one was home and she didn't give it a second thought to walk topless through the hallway to grab her deodorant off the bathroom counter where she'd left it after her 'early morning' shower.

Her jeans that were too long to wear without heels rubbed against the wood floor and made an audible denim swoosh as she scuffled into the kitchen to make coffee. The 'Mr. Coffee' went slam-bam against the counter as she pulled it towards her and poured in the water that was already in the pot.

Putting in a filter and spilling most of the coffee grounds onto the counter instead of the filter tray she flicked the switch and threw a cut English muffin that she'd dropped on the floor in her haste into the toaster that sat in a small pile of crumbs next to the outlet and coffee that was-a-percolating.

She grabbed butter and a knife, flung them in the general direction of the counter, the sound of them smacking against the boxy ceramic cookie jar that had cookies on it like a bas relief was loud against the hum of the refrigerator.

Scritch-scratching denim on wood denoted her path down the hallway and back to her room where she had left her bra and shirt and socks and shoes.

She grabbed her 'Tru Glow' perfume, AVON was the older woman's addiction and the teen raided the shoebox of perfume she kept in her closet for a scent that was less than too much, two spritzes to the neck, two for the wrist, four for the torso, two thumbs of 'Obsession' on the wrists and she smelled delicious.

It all faded after she got off the bus anyway, they were subtle and the only reason they lasted to the end of the day was because her body never got hotter than eighty degrees.

Dressing the rest of the way quickly and grabbing her glasses from the spot on the dresser she watched herself go through the motions in the mirror that had reminders taped on it and memos displayed like Christmas cards between wood frame and glass.

The normalcy of it led her to scowl at her reflection.

She grabbed her socks and boots from under the lounger and held them in a loose grip.

Piling her cigarettes into the inside pocket of her jacket and grabbing a scarf that didn't match her gray sweater she flicked of the lights with a flippant one fingered gesture that had more force than necessary behind it.

For the first time she noticed a note taped onto the frame of her door, it had brushed her ear as she went to go down the hall.

'_Lo, you're doses are on the coffee table. I'll be back tomorrow, call if there are any messages for me. Have a nice 1__st__ day. –Mir.'_

She reached for the note and peeled it slowly from the wood, it creased at the pressure from her thumb and index finger.

Folding it down small and sliding it into her pocket she went to the kitchen to retrieve her English muffin and fill her coffee canteen.

It unnerved her at such an early hour to enter the only part of the house with lights on, it was more than slightly eerie, the effect of it, like the kitchen had turned into its own little microcosm.

Waving it off she snatched her two dollars in lunch money tucked under the crystal candy-dish that had always been used as an ashtray.

A drop of melted butter fell with a dull _shalck_ onto the placemat from the piece of breakfast hanging from her teeth.

Her boots made a louder slap against the floor when she dropped them to accompany the sound.

The money went into her pocket and coffee was poured into the tall metal canister she balanced in her hands already full with the duffel bag that had lain across one of the kitchen chairs and a folder of files for the school nurse that she was thumbing through for the excuse of doing something.

Putting everything down she sat down heavily on the chair that wasn't pushed in at the table. She yanked on socks too long to wear around company if one wanted to keep their dignity intact, she slide on her boots, pulling on the laces when they were too tight to slide her foot in past the ankle of the boot.

Her tug on the red laces was harsh but the metal lace tags never gave, the boots were the best money she'd ever spent. Putting her booted ankle on her other knee she picked a hairball off the laces and glanced at the tree insignia at the bottom of the boot. She smiled at it for no reason other than the fact that it was cute.

The boot's partner went on quicker and when finished she made it a point to leave the kitchen lights on. The light from the fixture splashed into the dining room and illuminated half of the living room.

Secreting away the small padded, black, zippered case left on the low coffee table by the older woman into the side pocket of her duffel the teen doubled checked to see if she had everything.

Bag. She adjusted how it sat on her shoulder.

Folder. She straightened the papers and closed it with a parchment snap.

Cigarettes. She coaxed one out with her teeth.

Jacket. She zipped up.

Scarf. She made it loose and finally, fed up with it, undid the knot and let it hang in unequal lengths around her neck.

Shoes. She wiggled her toes against tight sock and firm leather.

Coffee. She took a sip.

She nodded.

Not bothering to lock the door she shimmied down the steps hitting the edge with the middles of her feet only.

Flicking the wheel flint of her lighter she lit up and held in the smoke, it came out with a hard whoosh only after she held it in until her chest felt pleasantly snug.

It had rained, parts of the yellowing lawn were sodden and sunken and water dredged up to the surface as the soil packed down under the weight of every step. She took the shortcut across her front lawn and through the sump-like grassy area next to her house.

She thought as she walked to the intersection at the end of the road when she reappeared on asphalt from the heavily shrubed no man's land that was the outskirts of her 'couple-of-acres' property that she didn't dare tell anyone was actually five miles.

Suffice it to say they'd built the house closer to the edge of the property rather than the middle, she silently sent up thanks for that move, though she would have liked putting on a grandma voice just to go 'when I was young I had to walk five miles to the bus stop everyday.'

Her drags and outbursts of smokes were erratic, and shallow, steady, and heavy, in an incoherent pattern.

She thought about the older woman and their talk at one in the morning. She'd knocked on her door and the teen who had been up answered it after removing herself from a wide circle of papers and diagrams and charts. The phone had rung five minutes previous to the knock and the older woman had answered quickly. The teen imagined that the knock on her door was about that.

'You're up.' Statement not question from the older woman.

'Yeah. Studying.'

'I have to go in.'

'Okay.'

'No, I mean I have to go in now. There's a problem with the samples and they need me there because Dr. Coug is out. Bastard.'

'Okay.'

'Will _you_ be okay?'

'Yeah. I'll be fine.'

'I have to get ready, I signed all your stuff. Go to bed.'

'I will. Soon.'

'What are you studying?'

'Genetics.'

There was no answer, but there was look. The door closed slowly and the teen pretended not to notice the lack of answer was everything besides lack of interest.

The conversation had been short but as the teen made her way to the bus stop she couldn't help but wonder if it really had been as mundane of a problem as what the older woman had said. Doubting it she walked until the wail of a train whistle cracked the silence of 6am.

Tracks cut the edge line of the property. The wail was the sound that cut through the years of her life. She knew she was home when it woke her up in the middle of the night. She liked it.

She turned despite knowing that she wouldn't be able to see the train, she mouthed 'three cars.' There were always three cars. At the stop sign denoting the start of the 'Y' intersection where the rest of the world merged with her and the older woman's hermitage she knew she'd forgotten something.

Her cell she'd guess by the look on Magenta's face. Pugnacious with pop-tart crumbs stuck to it and a cell phone in her hand that she glared at with malicious intent.

"Me and my posse would like a word with you." Magenta pointed at her, cell phone in hand, and waved Layla over while walking over towards the blonde.

She fought the urge to run, having now been spotted. Dropping her cigarette with practiced finesse she gave an equally cool look in Magenta's direction. What was meant to be funny made Layla stop mid-bite in a section of poptart where, no doubt, Magenta had received her crumbs from as well.

"I think you're neato." She tried with a weak smile letting her gaze warm up, she bounced her duffel on her shoulder.

"Morning." Layla half-waved with the hand that wasn't around one of the straps of her backpack and that held her breakfast of champions, with smores filling, from the brown and white look of it.

"Morning. Sorry I couldn't come out last night, too tired."

"Too bad you couldn't, you would have gotten to see Warren naked, gyrating…"

Layla and Lo looked at each other with the uninterested stare of '6am and dead tired.'

"…neeeked…,what? No 'ha ha,' that's boring." Magenta brushed dry crumbs from her mouth and picked up the half-fallen cigarette at the other girl's feet, took a drag and let it drop again.

"Magenta you're gross." Layla looked towards the direction the bus would come from without interest.

The blonde was unsure if the 'gross' was because of the cigarette or the naked Warren thing.

"What's boring is that there are no hot men around at this bus stop, Magenta don't laugh at that. It's not a joke." The blonde added quickly.

"What? Oh, you mean the obvious joke in that I should choose to ignore?" She smiled at Lo.

"Yeah that one, but seriously where are _all_ the men?"

"Amen, sister." They both laughed and Layla rolled her eyes behind a pair of sunglasses that weren't shaded nearly enough for them not to see the eye movement.

"Oh, shut up Layla." Lo shouted obnoxiously.

Magenta laughed loudly.

They stood in dumb silence, no one knowing what to say next after a summer of not seeing each other. Layla crossed her bare arms to ward off the chill of the morning. Magenta thumped down on the overhanging grass framing the road and banged her shoes together, Lo sat next to her and toed her boot with the other girl's.

"So…" Magenta started.

"Yeash…" Lo trailed.

"Schedule?" Magenta asked waggling her eyebrows.

"I'll show you mine if you show me your's."

"Perverts." Layla sat down next to them and pushed her sun glasses up onto her head. Lo made a mental note to bring hers tomorrow, the sun was blinding even through the trees and obscured one whole half of her panoramic view.

The blonde look to the left and squinted against the sun. The rumble and gear shifting sound of a bus rolled across her meninges.

"On the bus." She said with a grin while getting up and brushing dirt off the back of her jeans with flourish.

Layla helped Magenta up and together they stood with the mixed expressions of aggravation and long nights that every kid over middle school age etched onto their faces before boarding the bus that heralded another year of fake GPA's and smelly gym clothes and bad cafeteria food.

**********

_7:11am_

The bus ride had been long, much too long.

It smelled. It hadn't been driven all summer.

The seats were wet. Windows had been left open over night in the bus yard.

It was too loud. Freshmen hooted and hollered the second wheels left earth.

He read his new locker assignment off the crinkled and creased slip of paper with his schedule on it.

_Locker: 4621 Combination: 39-15-49_.

He didn't know why lockers went up past four-thousand when they had less than twelve-hundred of them. He dropped the thought before he could annoy himself with the same issue but applied to classroom numbers.

Finding it in a hallway that was less crowded than he thought would be and rolling the dial back and forth and back, missing the forty-nine more than once and having to start over twice he opened it and was immediately able to know with certainty that _'Disguise'_ had been the previous owner, the fact that it had been written in Sharpie marker might have had more than a little something to do with his deduction.

He found a notebook that was only half-written in, a pen with a chewed on and mashed up cap, the felt inside of a dried out marker or maybe a highlighter, and two stained index card stuck in the metal folds of the locker inside.

Ripping out the written on pages in the notebook and dropping them at his feet next to his bag he tried to remember what his first class was without looking at his schedule. He couldn't, and then he remembered why.

He was tutoring first period.

"Shit." He announced slamming the mutilated notebook into the bottom of the locker.

"Bad mood?" Came from out of no where from behind him.

Turning, he raised an eyebrow at Will Stronghold who looked entirely too pleased with himself at too early in the morning. He went back to being angry at his locker. Keeping in his crouch he reached for his messenger bag and undid the snap. Grabbing a handful of spiral notebook spine he yanked and pulled them out.

"So how was you're summer." The other boy slid down the locker next to his and stretched out his legs once his butt hit the floor.

Taking a moment to shove a carousal pen in the back pocket of his jeans and throw his bag onto a hook inside the locker he tried to think of an answer that was long enough to satisfy the other boy without getting lip over taking too long to answer.

"Fine. Worked a lot, slept a lot. Not bad." He stood up and reached inside the now upside down side pocket of his bag and took out tape. His hand found the pocket with his schedule and he stuck it to the inside of the door with one small strip of tape.

"Excuse me." A thin girl in their grade said as she tried to get into her locker which the other boy was reclining against.

"Sorry." Will rushed to get up, his back scrapping against the cold metal as the back of his shirt rose up in his haste, he kicked his bag towards Warren to make room for the girl.

She gave a muffled 'thanks' and dropped a bag that sounded heavier than it looked.

"So that sounds boring." He answered finally in response.

"It was very relaxing." Warren nodded to himself and went to slam his locker shut.

"Hey hey, hold on." The other boy said with a quick squeak and a quicker hand that left a mark in the metal when he grabbed for it. It was too late to grab the rebound of it when it bounced hard and went for the face of the girl at the locker next to them.

"Ah…-!" Warren made a futile grab but the air flow changed around them the locker door came back and smashed Will in the hand.

The girl next to them shot Will a look, while he yelled in exclamation and sharp pain, that spelled out murder in a dozen different languages and slammed her locker without touching it.

"Shit." The shorter boy cringed and brought his hand to his face to inspect it. It was fine.

"Bad mood?" Warren teased.

Will glared. "Why are you only happy when someone gets hurt man?"

"Not everyone, just you."

"Ha ha. I think my hand is broken."

"If your hand is as hard as your head I don't think it'd break that easy. She probably could have taken a finger or two, though." He chuckled.

Will frowned.

"What was I doing?" He asked, trying hard to remember what he had been doing.

"Being annoying." Warren muttered, not soft enough to not be heard but not loud enough to get picked up unless you weren't distracted with your ego.

"Oh, your schedule. Let's see. Tutor? You're tutoring? Ha. Okay what else? Super strategies, nope. Chem, okay Layla's in your class and I think Ethan got bumped up because he did really well last year. Physics, damn. I got Mech with Zack that period. Study hall, gym, Magnitude Manip.? Oh yeah you failed last year right? Okay don't gimme that look. Lunch and gadgets. I heard Magenta and Layla got early dismissal."

"I've got driver's ed. too."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Cool. What days?"

"Wednesday and Fridays."

"Ah cool man. I got Friday too. Lecture, what do you have?"

For a moment the taller boy looked sick but it passed when the other boy clarified his driving schedule.

"I have car." He tried to say it nonchalant but it came out more relived than he intended.

"Don't be like that man." Will slumped against the other boy's locker.

With a grin Warren started walk away towards classroom 'E' that was in the outdoor corridor. For a second he wondered why he'd even bothered to go to his locker when he could have dropped his stuff in a corner of the classroom for the whole period.

For a second he'd almost forgotten what he was going to say to Will. He remembered after he took a second to think.

"You know Stronghold, when you say 'man' and 'cool' you start to sound a lot like Zack."

He walked on. The other boy stayed slumped before shaking his head with a smile and making his way to his own first period class making eyes at his hand every few seconds to make sure it wasn't puffing up or turning colors it wasn't supposed to.

**********

_8:42am_

"Uh, how much _longer_? I swear Lo my brain's melting." A purple tuft came wafting out of the girl's loose bun as she let her face fall artlessly down onto her folded arms.

The blonde with a pen cap kept hanging from her mouth by only her teeth gave a heavy sigh and checked the clock mid-chew.

"Ten minutes on the dollar." She pressed her tongue flat against the bitten off end of the cap, it hurt when she pressed her taste-buds against it.

The girl next to her with the messy hair turned her head off her elbow and looked at her.

"Don't you get to bail after fifth?"

The blonde stuck the end of her pen in the encaptured cap and put her chin on her fist. Her head turned to the right wistfully to look down at her friend.

"Not today, but since Dr.'s Ed. doesn't start until next week I guess today and Friday I'm hanging with Spex. It's a pain, but there's no bus to take me back here on the days I have lecture and car so I kinda have to just stay. Power's gave me a choice between Spex and Boomer and I'd rather not have done three hours of slinging balls back and forth."

Magenta laughed softly.

"At least Max. High has one thing we don't."

"What's that?"

"Boys. In. Uniform."

For a moment the blonde was puzzled then she understood from the copious amount of eyebrow waggling coming from the girl sitting next to her.

"What's your flavor? Track or volleyball?" She asked her purple headed friend even after their teacher had shushed the class so he could ramble on about the eight different categories of escapes they would be covering over the year. The blonde only listened up to the point where he'd mentioned there would be a beginning of the year project with a partner that was due at the end of the month.

"Me? Hmmm. That's not so tough. Track because they wear shorts and you get to see those race horse flanks in motion ya know what I mean? Okay so Lacrosse or soccer?"

"Damn. Um. Soccer boys are usually the slim ones but the other boys carry big sticks." She snorted at her own joke.

"You have to pick one." Magenta badgered, not letting her slide.

Lo gave a dismissive look and huffed, defeated.

"Soccer, because they don't have to wear face gear and some of them can do some nice jumps, like the mid-air 'kick a ball that's coming at your face and WHAM!' Just smack. I like that."

"Yeah baby. I should skip one day and meet you there, we can stare at them after-school, get some food, lure some under the bleachers a…-" She stopped mid-sentence and looked to the table in front of them.

The teacher started to pass out the details on the aforementioned project, the two-person table in front of them handed the last two sheets back to them.

Instructions

_Press write a well detailed status report and escape plan on one of the following environments while taking into account the points made on pgs. 57-236 (Chaps. 3-11) _

Rubric

_Status Report - 25pts._

_Escape Plan - 30pts._

_Floor Plan Details w/ chart - 15pts._

_The Human Element - 5pts._

_Level of Understanding - 15pts._

_Creativity - 10pts._

Topics

_1.) Outdoors (sparsely populated)_

_2.) Outdoors (densely populated) _

_3.) Airborne_

_4.) Subterranean_

_5.) Underwater_

_6.) Indoors (sparsely populated)_

_7.) Indoors (densely populated) _

_8.) Subconscious_

Lateness Policy

1st Day Late: 5pts. off final grade project

2nd Day Late: 15pts. off final grade of project

3rd Day Late: 35pts. off final grade of project

4th Day Late: Project Not Accepted

**Due:** September 30th (Wednesday)

Looking over the sheet the blonde put a box around both 'subterranean' and 'indoors (densely populated)' she channeled underground desert prison complex and any large building that had lots of security in it. She was leaning towards the underground desert prison complex, even 'Coach' in the outlet mall had a large amount of security personnel inside it.

She doubted she would be getting ten points for creativity if she went with the indoors option.

Looking at the boxed option and abbreviated options and reminder notes and brainstorming launch points Magenta told her she was 'dangerously overeducated' and went back to not listening to what the teacher was saying.

Circling the due date Lo nudged the other girl in the arm and wrote on the side of her paper, 'I could've eaten cheerios and crapped a better insult.'

Magenta's over the top laugh told her she got the joke.

Giving an over exaggerated gesture of back and forth, back and forth, and sign language of 'you, me, thumb-pointed-over shoulder-and-finger-gesture-denoting-my-place' to Magenta that they were partners she made the other girl aware of the situation that was about them being partners.

In response Magenta pointed over head and held up five, then four, then three fingers. Looking at the blonde for a space of two more seconds the other girl made an O with her thumb and forefinger.

The bell rang.

Magenta raised her hands to the ceiling and gave a mute 'thank you' to the god of bells.

Getting up and reclaiming their books and chewed on pen-caps they made their way to the door, getting stuck behind others who were just as eager to bail-out.

"By the way, you and me are partners."

The other girl turned her head with a thin smirk.

"And here I thought you were signing for me to take my pants off and jump on your face."

"Yeah, I know. That was the first part. The second said we're partners and I'm doing all the work because you'll forget about it."

"Yeah, I missed that. I was too busy trying to unzip my pants."

**********

_9:07am_

It wasn't as weird as they were making it out to be.

Will's choice of lab partner. How it hadn't been one of _them_, or even himself for that matter.

The thing was, was, that it had been happening slowly over the years and now it was final. Will's self-alienation from the group. It was simple, as they'd all grown older he'd simply become more aware at how odd his situation was, his status as a 'sidekick lover,' so now that friendship that had seemed so strong had become so much more private, Warren wondered however if it was still as strong.

Maybe that was the reason Will tried to find any excuse to hang out with him. He was a 'Hero' too.

More shocking than all that was the fact that all three of them, Layla, Ethan, _and _Will had ended up in Mad Science Senior Chemistry. For Ethan and Layla he suspected it had something to do with the fact that they'd been bumped up a year since they were Freshmen because they had done well enough on the entrance exams when they were twelve, for Will though he decided it had something to do with Layla's coaxing and figurative hand holding through his biology homework the previous year.

Warren had no doubt in his mind that the same thing would happen again this year now that Will had to take both Mad Science Junior Astronomy and Mad Science Senior Chemistry.

Currently the partner situation had been Will went off to the side with a kid in Warren's grade who's powers had something to do with mild cognitive and mental suggestion effects, Layla had chosen Ethan but looked back at Warren with a look that spelled out 'I'm sorry.'

He himself was left with a girl name Paula who was in his own grade whose powers ran along the lines of human binoculars. She said hello and left the chit-chat at that. They sat in silence and listened for the first ten minutes.

At the table next to them Layla and Ethan talked eagerly over something Warren doubted meant much for the future of mankind.

"I'm working down at that little greenhouse that's at the farm over by the elementary school." The redhead answered to some question that Warren didn't hear Ethan ask. Across the room Will sat doodling, uninterested like the rest of the class.

There was little room for questioning that he was wishing he could be sitting in on Layla and Ethan's powwow of friendship and pointless conversation

"…-ou listening? Waaaareen."

His head snapped to the left upon hearing his name.

"What?" It came out a bit heavier than Layla was expecting.

"Me and Ethan were just wondering if you got accepted to an internship yet. I'm going with the Society and Will's going with the League an…-"

"And _I've _been accepted into Global Guardians already. They said I could even begin working in the financial office for their public relations front by the time I graduate." Ethan chirped, pleased and eager to contribute to the conversation.

Warren tried to think of a nice way to explain why he hadn't even applied to anywhere yet. He also tried to figure out what the financial office of a public relations front was, somehow he found himself wondering if that meant Ethan was basically going to be a spy that handles mass amounts of money for illegitimate purposes funneled from legitimate resources. He doubted it.

"I think I'm taking a gap year." He answered finally going back to clicking his pen, changing the color from red to green to blue to blue with a quick succession of small clicking snaps.

"Gap year? Really?" Layla questioned not satisfied with the answer given.

Just about to answer he was cut off by Ethan who had just the right thing to say.

"You know studies from the Institute of Applied Hero Science Studies have said that college and internship ready students on the Hero track at booster schools, like this, who decide to take a gap year between programs of study and work-study apprentice programs are three times more satisfied with their choices made after their year off than students who have made their choices while still in said booster schools."

Warren and Layla exchanged looks of apprehension at knowing, but not believing, someone's head could hold so much knowledge.

"Really?" Layla ventured not knowing how to follow up without facts and statistics on her side.

"Oh, of course. Their studies are usually at the forefront of everything Hero and Sidekick related, they have a reputation anyway. So Warren are you still going to be working at the Paper Lantern now that's school's started again?"

Ethan paused only to turn a page in his notebook to take a clean page of notes that the their teacher had up on the board. Layla and Warren took the clue and copied down the last few sentences they'd neglected to copy just as they were being erased. He'd missed half a sentence but he doubted he'd missed much. As far as grading policies went there were only so many ways to break them down.

"Warren?" Ethan asked obviously not ready to have a question go unanswered.

"Ah…, yeah. Still working. Different hours."

"Oh no!" Layla sulked to herself wearing the expression of someone who'd forgotten something.

"What?" Ethan refunneled his attention to his nearer right and Warren kept his glance on the redhead to his left in the row next to him.

"I forgot my physical. I have to give it to the nurse so I can do my assessment today. I'll have to go and have my mom fax it over. I'm gonna go get a pass, I might not be back so I'll see you guys later. Ethan. Sixth period. Don't forget to tell Will to come down and get the forms from guidance."

She left.

Ethan took notes.

Warren went back to thinking.

It was eight minutes until the bell rang when he felt a poke on his arm. He brushed the spot and looked at the girl sitting next to him.

His blonde lab partner, Paula, looked at him irritated.

"Can you stop that?"

He must have given her a look that asked 'what the hell are you talking about.' With a click he changed his pen from green to black, from black to red, from red to blue.

She looked like she was going to laugh, or possibly punch him. Girls were complicated.

"You're clicking."

He put his pen down, removed the temptation. "Sorry."

"Uh-huh." She answered, her eyes already turned back to the notes on the board.

He tried to do the same but found himself turning his head to look over at Will. He was looking at him. For that moment Will seemed embarrassed to have been caught staring at him. Warren gave a small shrug. The other boy looked unthawed by it.

For a moment he was confused until he realized Will was looking at Layla's empty seat, the other boy looked to the door and then away from Warren's general direction.

Warren felt stupid for a small thin moment. He settled down for another eig…- no, seven minutes of pointless notes on a pointless grading policy.

**********

_10:09am_

She didn't know anyone, it was only by luck that the class was more theory than lab. It was only after she found out that they didn't need partners that she relaxed. Leaning back and trying to appear calm and cool and collected she tried to catch the kid sitting in the next row peeking at her.

Stretching as to show off taut abs like a person using shiny objects to make their pets pay attention she saw no movement from the brunette.

Magenta would have approved. He was cute in a nerdy kind of way, tall, glasses, casual clothes, with a smear of purple near the first button of his white shirt, a battle wound from his breakfast no doubt.

He had a jaw that was made to be nibbled on by an appreciative female body and while she wasn't in the market to buy it didn't mean she couldn't browse the wares.

It was a few minutes later after attendance was finished and the topic of fieldtrips was sparked when she got some attention.

"You're friends with Warren Peace, right?"

She choked on the spit that had collected in her throat while she was clenching her jaw to try to look more feline and finely featured.

"Aghk…uh-huh."

Behind his very nice glasses he looked concerned. "You okay?"

Nodding she tried her answer again. "Yeah. I know Warren, why?"

"Oh, I work with him over at the Paper Lantern. I've just seen you in there with Will and Layla and the rest of them. The guys in the kitchen know you by order. I'm Alecksi."

"I'm…-"

"You're beef teriyaki, double beef, double sauce, no veggies. Dolores. Gotcha. Nice to meet you. If we have to have partners do you want to be mine?"

She was at a loss for words, not knowing if there had been more than one question in the whole jumbled mess of his longwinded, albeit nicely spoken in a very nice vocally timbred, spiel, or if he really expected her to say anything but 'yes.'

"Sure. We can be partners. You better be bringing me lunch everyday." She grinned with closed eyes in what she hoped was a super cute expression.

"Why don't you get your buddy to do that?" He was teasing her. She was digging it, until he'd brought up Warren.

Suddenly she didn't feel like making jokes and playing cat and mouse with witty quips with the cute boy in the next row. Suddenly she felt burned out. 'Bombshell, Match Stick, Hot Head, Sparky, etc. etc. etc. blah blah blah…,' Her thoughts went on in a predictable manner.

Realizing that he was still waiting for an answer.

"…because he's a jerk." She tried to smile while she said it but all she could manage was a lopsided, floppy grin. It was passable enough so Alecksi smiled back.

His smile was nice, but it just wasn't her thing.

Somehow she wondered just when scowls and mean jokes had become her thing. As she tried to pinpoint the exact moment when such a stupid thing happened she realized some things just weren't that easy.

"He's just rough around the edges." The boy answered with his chin on his fist, looking completely satisfied to ignore everything important on the class just to have a dumb conversation.

'And maybe I'm just way rad.' When her mouth twitched she realized there was no way to hide her reaction. He'd think she was laughing at Warren Peace. People did not laugh or giggle or snicker at Warren Peace. She'd felt a sinking sensation in her gut that warned her she was ruining someone's reputation.

Her answer to the boy's comment was simple enough to spell the finality of the topic especially when she looked away from him and took notes after she replied, "Yeah, tell me about it."

Every once in awhile he would look in her direction, always with a small smile, never disappointed that she didn't try to catch his eye. It made her feel bad that finally getting some attention was now what she didn't want. She wondered in Alecksi could tell she was ignoring him.

She felt like a cranky old woman. She could have yelled at the kid, she could have yelled at her own stupid self.

There were five minutes left for her to sit in her own self-made private hell.

They passed in exaggerated slowness. The last thing Lo remembered listening too was the boy asking her a question just as the bell rag. She shot up and out of the room before anyone else. Practically flying down the stairs she made her way to the east hallway by the 'Biological' and 'Mechanical' enemies classrooms to get to her locker.

She found Magenta leaning against the metal box she was assigned to throw her shit in.

"Skipping study hall? They give detention for that now, you know." She said as Magenta shifted away so she could get in her locker.

"Nope, got a pass and everything. I had to go to my 'locker.' And by locker I mean I wandered around for twenty minutes." She grinned a grin that showed all her teeth and made her face scrunchy and unattractive.

She threw her stuff in her locker. Magenta peered over Lo's shoulder to preen in the mirror that was permanently stuck to the inside of the locker door by the previous owner.

"Making yourself pretty for Zack?" She teased as she fixed her 'dull flush' lipgloss to her pucker. She blew a kiss to Magenta's angry face in the mirror.

Her purple-haired friend slammed the locker door shut in a mean spirited gesture that screamed 'not funny' in about every language known to man.

"Not cool." The blonde replied shoving the black-capped lipgloss into her the right pocket of her jeans.

"Speaking of _men_, not _boys_ like Zack, find any eye candy yet?"

Hesitating for more than a short moment the blonde looked down the hallway hoping something would catch her attention and distract her to the point of _forgetting_ to answer Magenta's question.

It didn't happen.

"Yeah. One. Cute, glasses. Smarty guy. In my Genetics class. He knows us actually. Works with Warren at the Paper Lantern."

Magenta looked thoughtful, trying to place a face she hadn't yet seen. Finally her eyes focused back on the blonde.

"Didn't know you went for the oriental types but hey whatever flo…-"

"He's not Chinese, dumbass. Or Asian, if you want to be P.C."

"Oh, then I have no clue. Oh wait, hmmm. Nope. Nevermind. Maybe a cutie busboy slipped past my watchful eye. Or maybe you just have bad taste."

"Maybe you're too busy staring at Zack's ass."

Magenta kicked her shin.

The blonde scowled and asked were Layla was.

Magenta didn't hear her.

"What?"

"I asked if you knew where Layla was?"

They walked side by side down the hallway, maneuvering around their weaving peers and uptight, unsure Freshmen. You could pick the newbies out like giant pandas. They were that obvious.

"Layla got called down to the office to go pick something up. I think her mom faxed something over for her."

"Shit."

"What?"

"I forgot to hand something in to Spex. I have a slip that says I can self-medicate."

"Oh yeah you're salt shots."

"It's better than eating a sleeve of saltines, ya know?"

"I hear ya. So tell me more about this cutie of your's."

The blonde proceeded to pretend she hadn't heard a word Magenta said after a certain point. She walked faster but the other girl would not be eluded.

'Crap.'

**********

_11:01am_

"So it's like I was saying I got a sweet gig man. Real sweet. Ya know how it is, just walked in all cool and dressed fresh for success and handed her my resume and BAM! Got my sweet setup and everything. I can play for free and get all the lu-xur-ies. I'm tellin' ya it's cool as can be, man."

"Zack do you have to say 'man' all the time?" Will asked without lifting his head from his arms.

"What do I say it a lot or something?"

He was silently thanking as many gods he could think of that study hall was almost over. Will he could deal with, Ethan could simply be ignored, Zack was a nightmare to be around for a full forty minutes without end.

"So, War, my man how's your schedge? Meet any ladies at the restaurant-tay late-lay?"

It was the rhyming, it was starting to melt his brain. Oh yeah. He could feel it.

"Warren's working a later shift these days Zack. Don't bother him so much he's trying to work on something." Ethan piped up with a tone that was as annoyed as Warren figured Ethan could sound, which was to say he sounded pleasant and friendly.

He wasn't actually working on anything, just copying down all his schedules in one place so he wouldn't have to worry about looking all over for them.

"Sooooo, what are ya working on, my _man_?" Zack leaned across the table to catch a glimpse at what Warren was writing.

"Oh. Driver's Ed. huh? Swanky. What days you got, hey! Maybe we have the same classes! Ah, cool, man!"

Will didn't look up from the spot on his arms that his head was buried in, obviously trying to tone out the dumb and stupid that was Zack's persistent questioning of everything and everyone at all times.

"Relax, Zack. He's not in our car class or our lecture class so just co…-"

The bang rang. Warren sent up a silent prayer as he booked it out of the empty lecture room they used for study halls.

Outside the girls were waiting.

Magenta and Layla were walking towards him, both coming from the same class obviously.

"Hey, Warren." Layla chirped hanging to one side of the hallway, waiting for Will to come out.

"Hi." He answered nodding at the pair and going to walk away.

Too late. The three other boys came barreling out of the classroom.

"Hey! Layla, Magenta. Nice to see you guys. What are you doing up here?"

"We've got study hall this period. What's your excuse?" Magenta deadpanned unamused at the cheerfulness.

"Sorry, she gets cranky when she hasn't had a nap." She shot Magenta a look. "So how's the first day going?"

"Great!" Zack said with unneeded enthusiasm.

"Well." Ethan added.

"Okay." Will responded making eyes at his girlfriend. He planted a peck on her cheek and she let her fingers linger on his jacket pocket. The camaraderie between them all made Warren feel out of place.

"Hey, is that Dolores? I thought she was outside this period." Magenta pointed out the blonde head at the end of the hallway.

"Oh, shoot! I forgot, I told her to come up here so I could give her the information I picked up at the office for internships, I was hoping she could give me a reference since her aunt works at Global." Just as the red head was about to run off Will chimed in.

"Isn't that unprofessional? Asking for a fake reference like that? Has her aunt _really_ seen you do anything?" He tried not to look smug.

"Don't be a dick, Will." Magenta punched him in the shoulder, he winced and the other boys exchanged 'Oooohs.'

Layla rolled her eyes and stopped the blonde in the middle of the hallway and then dragged her over to the side next to a row of lockers.

He turned to go as soon as he saw the two girls coming back over, if asked he was going to use the 'I'm going to be late' excuse. Magenta wasn't about to buy it.

"Uh-uh-uh. You're staying. Don't be so rude all the time, Mr. Peace." She blocked his path and her tone had amusement written all over it.

Too late to try to maneuver around her anyway.

"Hey, guys." She had already entered their makeshift circle with Layla.

Hellos were exchanged rapid fire like bullets, he was hoping one would hit him between the eyes.

"Oh! So, Lo, I saw that guy you were talking about. I like him, he says okie dokie."

Layla scowled. "He says _okie dokie_. Lame." It sounded hysterical coming out of her mouth. He snickered quietly as the Queen of niceties ragged on someone for their choice of happy words.

Seeing the blonde grimace at the sudden spotlight shined on her he instantly stood at attention. Her eyes coasted over him quickly and then returned to their purple-haired friend.

"Yeah, he was in my and Lay's disguise class. Pretty hot stuff. Good taste. He's scrumdidaliumscious."

Layla made a sound.

They all looked.

"You keep using that word, _all the time_, I do not think it means what you think it means."

"Course it means what I think it means, it means delicious."

"I concur. If Magenta thinks so, he must be delicious." Lo perked up sarcastically.

Magenta shoot a quip back at her with equal 'hidden girl meaning' sarcasm back at her.

"What if I told you we were talking about Warren?"

He suddenly wondered how he'd gotten into the conversation. He just stood there watching the stand off like an interested bystander of 'how-girls-are-mean-and-nice-at-the-same-time-to-one-another-and-you-never-really-know-which-because-they're-_fucked_-up-creatures.'

"Ugh." Layla interjected.

The blonde rolled her eyes. "You wouldn't be trying to talk Layla into believing Warren is edible."

"Who's edible? Are you guys talking about lunch? I'm starving. I hope they have spicy chicken sandwiches." Zack cut in, his mind suddenly ruled by the thought of all things edible.

"Me too." The blonde tried to steer the conversation away in a different direction, obviously uncomfortable.

"Yeah, she likes her chicken _real _spicy." Magenta snarked.

Warren didn't hear, he was too busy glaring at Will Stronghold who'd dropped his chemistry textbook on his foot. He'd missed the look the blonde sent Magenta too.

Layla didn't miss a thing.

"That failed Magenta, wasn't the least bit funny." She tried to knock Magenta down a peg for Lo's sake.

"What's funny. I missed it? Tell me. Come on! I was busy watching Warren almost roast Will. That did look like it hurt man, and on the toes and everything. Will I'd back away if I was you, man. Tell me! I wanna know what's so funny. Girls!" Zack whined like a child and drew Warren's attention back to the conversation he was missing.

Layla tossed her hair and picked Will's dropped book off the floor and held it far away from Warren's foot.

"Let it die, Zack. I said it _wasn't _funny. Lo didn't think it was funny."

Somehow Warren knew he missed something that probably had something to due with Magenta being a brat.

"Yeah, total not funny action going on all over the place. Listen guys I gotta go and report to Spex after I do my delinquent act for about fifteen minutes or…an hour. _SO_ I see you guys later okay?" She didn't wait for an answer.

"Those things will kill you, Lo!" Layla shouted after the blonde.

Warren saw her throw a wave over her shoulder like a dismissive party favor to Layla and keep walking.

He knew he'd missed something.

Magenta looked to pleased with herself.

Layla yelled at Will or being so clumsy with his stuff and asked Warren if his foot was alright.

He nodded and gave a noncommittal answer and watched the blonde head go out of sight down the stairwell.

**********

_11:20am_

She'd exited through a side door that none of the cameras faced, and with little pretense or dawdling she'd made her way across the full teacher's parking lot to the spot where a new garbage can waiting to get stepped on.

Moving with the practiced ease of someone who's done something too many times to falter with any part of it, she climbed on top of the grey dome lid and vaulted a knee onto the edge. It was firm and warm from absorbing a morning's worth of sun, she could feel it through the denim.

Scrambling over without looking she found out too late that the desk was no where near the garbage can on the other side of the wall. She hit the ground and shock volts snaked up the balls of her feet to her knees. Staying crouched she held in an dull outcry of discomfort.

Letting her knees touch the ground she rolled right onto her side and, finally, adding another ninety degrees, onto her back.

She watched the clouds while knocking her knees together, the spasm of numbness still sinking deep into her legs.

Thinking in slow spirals she relaxed with outstretched and extended arms and a blown open jacket, her hair a distorted wave above and around her head.

Her scarf flared out, criss-crossed, over her chest and pulled out across her shoulder.

It was almost too perfect a spot to have to move from.

Almost would have been completely had the desk's bad positioning not been niggling on her brain.

Enjoying the all too brief break, from bullshit, oh she could have killed Magenta for earlier, and the muted silence, that only short bursts of the intercom inside the school chiming up every so often broke, for just a moment longer she reached to her jacket's thrown open left side.

Coaxing out a cigarette and placing it gingerly, like something made of glass or dust, between the sharp line where top row teeth met bottom row teeth she mused to herself how easy it was to be Warren Peace, never having to worry about butane refills or wet matches.

Smiling softly, it looked horrendous with an open mouth and teeth showing, she snapped and pretended to light her cigarette.

"Whoosh." She grinned as it came out behind clenched teeth. She was being silly.

It felt nice.

She didn't light up right away, instead choosing to raise up on her elbows and tilt her head back far enough for the cords in her neck to hurt and her throat strain to swallow. Her hair fell into the catch between forearm and upper arm, right behind the elbow, like someone was flicking their eyelashes against her skin.

With a quick snap and twist of the black hair elastic on her wrist she swung her hair up into a haphazard bun. She slung herself up and walked while going to take a drag, realizing a little late that she hadn't lit her cigarette yet, and dragged the desk against the wall to just abut where it should have been.

She took four long, exaggerated, steps away from the wall and turned, stared at it for a long thought and plopped down onto the ground with outstretched legs. She knocked her boot soles together, the sound was a pleasant rubber thump.

The sound of rubber hit plastic cut through the fake silence laced with the whoosh of the school moving.

He swung himself over the wall in one fluid movement. His boots hit the top of the desk she'd just dragged the extra few feet to the left with little force behind it. Somehow she doubted that it wouldn't have mattered much if the desk wasn't there, he'd would have landed just as light, just as sure of his footing.

She almost hated him for it.

Almost.

It was like every movement had a potent dose of something animal laced in it, danger, power, raw edged masculinity.

His whole stance and way of moving would have been too much for her to look at seriously, too superhero-esque.

'Thank god.' She thought with a sharp release of a lungful of air she hadn't known she'd been holding in when his body suddenly bent double and shook with a coughing fit that was a smoker's 'bread and butter.'

"Yo. Match." She raised a hand in greeting.

"Yo. Snow." He responded. His face was unguarded, open for the barest and simplest of moments between them.

She coughed suddenly. It tore at her lungs.

It was another thing they shared.

Nasty bronchial coughs.

He snapped at the cigarette already between his fingers, the end dissolved into a splash of orange lace. He came over and sat next to her. Staring at the same spot on the wall that she thought she was, he reached over. She leaned into his hand, she puffed and held in that first cloud of acrid smoke.

It trailed out of her nose almost all on its own. She blew it out and turned to look at him, the air between them warm and suddenly vital, it seemed like an entity onto itself.

"Cutting?" She asked barely entertaining the thought that he'd followed her, it wasn't practical.

"We're picking classes. I don't care where they put me." He replied behind a column of smoke.

"Ah, save the citizen or power ball. The intensity, the choice." She intoned dramatically.

He turned. "So how's _Maxville_?" She could have sworn there was venom packed behind the words. She almost completely ignored it.

Almost.

"Well I found out this summer that we don't do any Rome. I was pissed about that, still pissed. I mean how are we supposed to learn about Europe without knowing its roots, like where it comes from and I don't mean Atlantis or Jesus, I mean Rome. It's Rome, you'll need a toga and obviously a sword on the days and you have mandatory civil service and by that I mean slaughtering Gauls and raping and pillaging and setting stuff on fire. But, I haven't gone yet, tomorrow's my first day. Still pissed about non-Roman action going on in the class. Thanks for asking." She took a breathe.

He interjected as she tried to think of what else she's forgotten to include in her small diatribe.

"You've just been dying to say that."

"You caught me."

She fell back and looked at the sky. Taking a puff she acknowledged in some primitive part of her brain that he'd brushed his hand across her bicep so as not her have her fall on it just the second before.

So used to her own body temperature her brain almost acknowledged his as a threat within the brief length of time that the small, accidental, touch had taken up.

It was almost a perfect day.

Almost.

A cloud passed over the sun.

They pretended not to notice the obvious.

**********

_12:12pm_

He'd found himself distracted for most of the period.

His distraction was equal parts of a boring orientation he'd already been through the first time around in the previous year when he'd failed the class and certain events that had happened less than an hour before.

Distraction fueled by the feeling of her breath, like ice, cupped inside his palm, as he sheltered the end of her cigarette and lit it while she sucked in smoke and the heat of his hand and blew it out with a wicked grin and a 'thank you' that had meant nothing more than just the thankfulness of seeing him do his one and only useful on-command trick: lighting cigarettes from his fingertips.

For the part of the class period he wasn't painfully bored during he'd managed to set a plasticy tack-up board on fire, it stank horribly and parts sunk deeper into the metal frame, concave and eaten away and melted.

Mrs. Vancort, an older woman with blue-rinsed gray hair, glasses with olive colored frames that rose into diamante points and a way of explaining things that was painfully slow when she grew tired of bullshit and aggravation from children who were just frustrated at their lack of fine-tuned control and unwillingness to acknowledge that they needed it, badly.

Warren liked Mrs. Vargas, liked the way she talked and taught. She was funny in a way that once you realized she was being funny that her sense of humor was horrible in the way it took things that were supposed to be good and nice and unbreakable and turned them inside out and bloody and sinewy and disturbingly funny in a good, bad, dead baby joke way.

When she looked at the melted mass of plastic and back at Warren she merely commented that he should take what he could get out of it. She told him to think of it as nothing but 'an instructive ten seconds, in a year of class that hopefully would turn out better than last year's.' She'd left it at that.

He went on to switch practice lanes in the large half of the 'classroom' that was more bowling alley and gun range shaped than a classroom should be, not that he was saying the design was a bad thing, it was functional and if he'd cared he'd might have said it was even innovative as far as classrooms shaped like bowling alleys and gun ranges with switchable practice lanes and retractable targets of various sizes and density, partnered with panels in the floor that rotated, swung, threw, and retracted back and forth at less than masterful prospective future heroes and sidekicks.

With a shout Mrs. Vargas told them there was ten minutes to bell and to back away from the training lanes. She hit a switch when everyone was clear. The panels making up the part of the floor that was outlined in red, for safety purposes, spread apart slowly and then with sudden speed folded accordion like into the wall with a slam, the targets and dummies sliding down in between the ever widening gaps with mechanical ease.

One very oblivious junior classman found it impossible to remain inside of the safety zone.

"Tuttle! Get your ass out of there!"

The too thin blond boy Warren assumed to be Tuttle, though he doubted Tuttle was his first name, turned too slowly and registered too gradually where he was standing.

His footing spread out beneath him.

Warren didn't know how far he would have fallen but he did know it would have hurt, probably, and possibly death was an option.

The speed of the floor slowed and the boy lost his footing at the speed of quicksand, Mrs. Vargas came forward in a way that looked as if she'd been pushed or shoved by something very large moving at high speed that had a lot of weight behind it. She flung herself and grabbed the boy by his collar and then 'flew' back in much the same way as she had come. Fast, hard, angry.

Her power and skill at using it, Warren thought, had probably been why she'd been given her position as the teacher of 'Magnitude Manipulation.'

She could do things with force and speed and maybe quantum physics, he couldn't remember exactly what he'd heard about her when he'd overheard the faculty talking about their days as heroes and sidekicks in the faculty lounge the day he'd been thrown through the cafeteria wall in his sophomore year.

His small class of ten kids, well eight not including himself and the kid that had just been about to break both his legs, and, or, die, had crowded around to listen to the ear lashing Tuttle was just about to receive when the bell rang.

"Go to class!" She yelled at the small group watching her glower at her thin, blonde, oblivious student, who, as far as first impression went with one's teachers, wasn't doing so well thus far.

Everyone turned to go slowly, but still going all the same.

He himself hefted his bag from the spot near the wall he'd dropped it and went to trot along.

"Hey, Warren."

He turned and looked at Mrs. Vargas.

"Wait for me in the classroom. I have to talk to you."

It wasn't like he could say no, so he parked himself in one the multitude of empty desks in the half of the classroom beyond the double, temperature resistant, damage resistant, all around power resistant, doors and waited.

He took perverse joy in hearing the older woman through the doors yell at her junior student. When she got angry, and he'd remembered from the previous year, she talked in an infuriating way. She spoke like a litany when she was angry, repeating everything she said over again if you interrupted her with an explanation, and it didn't matter how many times you interrupted her, she was a woman with a pattern. He assumed it was a learned practice that she had picked up from an aggressive childhood or a now long dead mentor she had once had herself. She did it all with a painful slowness that was, no doubt, going to make her student late for class.

Warren doubted that the kid would get a hall pass.

It took ten minutes of waiting before the kid came out of the practice room. Mrs. Vargas walked very close at his heels and sent him out angrily and with little patience.

Her mood did a staggering and surprising one-eighty when she acknowledged Warren. "Warren. I have to do a follow-up report on you, for you, and the board."

"Okay. What do I have to do?" He stayed sitting. He knew somehow if he'd gone to get up she just would've told him to sit down.

She crossed her arms and leaned against a desk two desk spaces in from of the one he sat at. "Nothing. It's just the school making sure they can give you a credit for this class and have you graduate. I don't think you'll have a problem though, you're getting better. I'd say you were passable last year, but you know it's not all about the concept of the class, or the written tests. It's the field stuff you have to worry about."

He nodded as if he knew, he didn't. He couldn't have told you what his problem was.

"Okay."

"You need to practice more."

He looked at her and for a moment he could see the woman she must have been when she was 'younger.' It was there, underneath her old colored hair and the crags of wrinkles and her impatience with getting old. She was probably once a very loud and fun person, the kind of woman that only really needed herself. He knew for a fact that she was only thirty-seven. It was her powers that had taken a toll on her.

Sometimes powers were like that.

He knew because she'd told him once last year. At the end of the year, before the sporadic week of finals where you only came in on the days you had tests and only in blocks of hour and a half for the tests you had. It was during a conversation on why learning how to both control and manipulate powers were so important, it doesn't come naturally.

She rubbed at the corner of her eye, one eye seemed cloudier than the other, as if a cataract had formed. It had. It was a wonder she hadn't thrown the Tuttle kid down into the hole in the floor herself for what he'd cost her; a decade on one part of her body from cellular degeneration, projecting inward cellular force on the outside environment, or something like that.

"It's just…hard. To practice, I mean. My mother isn't home much."

She just made a sound in the back of her throat that sounded like acknowledgement.

"Maybe you should ask Dolores to help you, she was one of my best. Maybe even Layla or Zack I've seen them work with their powers before, they're both very good. I know you all are in the same circle."

It was his turn to make a sound, it didn't sound a thing like approval or acknowledgement.

"I'll ask, I guess."

"Uh-huh. You still working too?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me the days your off and I'll stay after, teach you how to work the range and after that I'll just leave the door unlocked for you on those days. Use it when you like. Just don't take girls in there to feel their boobs or smoke crack or anything."

"Uh…thanks."

"Yeah. You need a pass to your next class?"

"Please."

**********

12:51pm

"I thoroughly enjoy watching you organize my shelves Miss Nansen. Why is 'Q' followed by 'U?'"

The blonde stopped stacking packets of gauze into a very neat and very sterile pyramid to look over her shoulder at the wizened, big spectacled woman leaning over her to peer at the almost alphabetical collection of pills, slaves, balms, and inhalants of a medical nature arranged both neatly and practically, if a little eclectically.

"Because 'Q' is always supposed to be followed by 'U' according to good grammar."

"I like the diversion from ho-hum." She patted the blonde's shoulder.

The teen nodded seriously, as if diversions from the ho-hum were something she spent many hours pondering while alone.

"Now what did I come in here to do? It'll come to me. I like your pyramid of bandages, might be more impressive if you did a circle with the rolls inside the boxes, maybe a giant ball. Work on that. Okay, I've got a bleedy and a wheezy in the other room."

Nurse Spex left with little more pretense than a chortled laugh and head that bobbled to it's own bobble-to beat.

The teen unpacked gauze from one of two boxes that would not work well into the box pyramid. Each had five rolls inside. There were bonus butterfly sutures and large wound bandages inside a sealed plastic pouch with a paper sheet that declared 'BONUS BUYZ!!!' packed tight and wrinkly inside the pouch in loud colors.

She shook a not-so-sterile any more roll of gauze out across the school floor that was made out of a material she could not name.

"Miss Naaaansen, I got a brokey out here." The cry came from the other room. She hurried out of the stockroom and poked her head out around the corner into the treatment room, gauze trailing away from her hand in a long white threadbare strain.

"Hi, Dolores." A wave of red hair flashed and shined in the harsh florescent and large eyes greeted her.

"You okay?" The blonde asked curiously.

"Me? Oh, yeah. It's Will. Yearly assessments. I won. He's a crybaby."

"I am not." Came a woeful male voice from behind a curtain that Nurse Spex's white lab-coated bottom popped out from around the edge from.

"Oh. Okay. You need ice?" She asked.

"Yeah, he does." Answered Layla.

"No. I don't." Will replied. He sounded angry and maybe a bit offended. It was the burn from get his ass kicked by Layla's flower power the blonde surmised.

She went over anyway and made a chunk of ice in the shape of the inside of her hand. Will dismissed it with an effeminate wave of the hand. Layla saw and scowled, snatched the chunk up and slammed it against his very broken arm. He howled.

"Now you need it…baby." She commented and left the area behind the screen to sit in the waiting area. Will smiled thinking the 'baby' was a term of endearment.

"Okay Mr. Stronghold I'm going to tell Miss Nansen to go somewhere else because I don't think she would like to see what happens next…well I'm sure you don't want her to see what happens next. You might cry. Bye, Miss Nansen."

The blonde took it that she was meant to leave. She was just about to the waiting area when she heard a crack and a painful intake of air.

Layla watched her walk over.

"So what are yearly assessments?" She asked, hoping for a simple answer.

The redhead looked forward with a smile, as if she'd been waiting for someone to ask. She face grew sharp and serious, like she was trying, now that she finally had had someone ask, to get all the details of her answer and explanation just right and perfect for the simple fact that she may never get asked the same question again.

"They're for students that have been accepted to junior internships, basically your accepted to an internship when your fifteen. You have to take them the beginning of junior year, February of junior year and at the same times during senior year and then every six months after senior year until application for full internship gets accepted when you turn twenty-one. We get pitted against each other for a round, and then there's an obstacle course, and last we have a written test. And that's it."

The blonde pretended to be interested enough to be polite and not enough to have the other girl go on.

"That's…nice. I mean it's really good for you guys."

"You sound enthralled." She had a feeling Layla was being snarky. She didn't know what was up with Layla lately, it seemed as if she had just gotten mean over the summer. Funny mean, but mean all the same.

A cry of an unmasculine nature sounded from the curtained off room. The blonde excused herself to roll a giant ball of gauze.

**********

1:28pm

He sat.

He wished someone like Magenta was in the class. Someone who had a cynical quip for everything.

He watched as a familiar face walked through the door, late.

A-mystery.

Maybe the class could be alright even with his coworker's lukewarm humor.

It was better than nothing.

**********

3:47pm

Finally home the blonde wilted under the weight of a day that was too long.

She was ready to fall down and die, she was crashing from too much coffee and too many cigarettes and not enough real food or sleep to keep the burn at bay.

Scrapping peanut butter thin across bread she made a sandwich and then slugged sips out of the almost empty soda bottle. She tottered off to her bed, too tired to put the bottle back in the fridge or throw the knife into the sink.

Knocking books off her bed and onto the floor she crawled on top of the blankets and mused on how exactly her room had to always be colder than all other rooms in the house. Reaching over she pressed the power button on her television. It came to life.

She dozed while staring at a book that had fallen open to an 'Also by the Author' page, there were ticks by every one of the displayed titles. Her large collection of books with the same collection of ticks on similar pages made it impossible to tell what book lay open on the floor by her bed.

On the television someone was making love enthusiastically as much as censorship allowed for enthusiastic lovemaking on cable, they could have been fucking too, possibly it was a fight scene. Just as she would doze close to the edge of sleep raised voices or cries would jerk her away from the possibility of sleep. She lulled herself into sleep by making up well-placed questions and answers to conversations that were made-up and to-be-had, she was making sure she was ready for any situation or conversation besides the ones of boring everyday monotony.

She thought about the cute boy in her genetics class. Alecksi. She found herself beginning to like him. Then she thought about their conversation and it occurred to her that he had been making fun of her with the beef-teriyaki comment. He had been being snide.

She found herself not liking him so much anymore after she realized her realization.

She thought about Warren, wondering if he had yearly assessments too, like Layla and Will.

She thought about how she was going to kill Magenta for the hallway thing the next time she saw her.

Sleep came.

When she woke up it was seven at night. The house was still empty. She called Layla and got her voicemail, she left her message telling her that she and Magenta were invited over on Saturday for a girls' night in, food and fun and naked pillow-fights and nail polish and stuff.

Getting up she washed her face, fixed her slipping bun, and grabbed her coat. She'd forgotten to take her boots off before she climbed into bed.

She thought about not going to where she was going to go but she had nothing better to do anyway. Calling Magenta for a ride she prepared herself for an onslaught of sarcasm that she was only half-awake to deal with.

* * *

6:58pm

"You wanna go in the knick-knack place?" Magenta's eyes shifted to the passenger seat.

The blonde shifted her knee into a more comfortable position on the dashboard, shrugging and then verbalizing her assent. "Yeah. Let's go do that."

"Good. So who's getting the snacks for Saturday?"

The blonde rubbed a stain of peanut butter on the knee of her jeans and gave her answer to the world outside the passenger window.

"I'll go shopping, I guess. I mean I'll pay if you can take me to the supermarket. What do you want?"

"Blue corn chips. Layla will want pretzels or whatever. Gingerale and coke and I'll bring the _rum_." She annunciated rum as if she was a pirate. The blonde wasn't sure if she was serious but she didn't care enough to ask.

They pulled into the strip-mall at the end where the Real Estate office was renting a store front. Magenta parked and unbuckled her seat belt, the blonde undid her with a snap and sent it back over her shoulder with a smack. Magenta feed hers into it's repository, slowly, carefully and smirked at the blonde.

Getting out the blonde made a point not to slam the car door as she got out. Going through the door to the small card shop that sold smokes and paper products and candy and beanie babies and ceramic figure pieces of little Sheppard children with lambs and angels and whatever the collection of religious knickknacks of children was called, a smell hit her, a smell that was epitomized by all card shops like how the smell of new shoes permeated shoe stores.

She wandered and eventually picked up a glass sculpture of a nurse, red colored glass made up a decal of the red cross on the nurse's edge pocket. It had a little round paper sticker on the base, over the figurines feet, and written on it, in a bleeding felt pen, was the price; fifteen with a dollar sign before the number. She bought it with a long rope-stick of strawberry laffy taffy.

Magenta came up behind her.

"What is that?"

The figurine disappeared into a wad of newspaper and then into a small paper bag. "It's statuette of a nurse."

"Yeah? Why'd you buy it?"

She shrugged.

"I was thinking of giving it to Spex. I don't know, I like it. I might keep it." She shrugged again.

Magenta tilted her head to the side and stared at her while the blonde took her bag and gave a small thank you to the cashier and walked past. "Okay. Let's go."

They left the store and walked down the cement sidewalk in front of the stores and stopped in the middle at the Paper Lantern, it took up two storefronts and still looked smaller than it actually was, it was actually fairly large inside.

The blonde opened the door, the bell chimed. hanging her head and leaving her arm extended behind her to keep the door open she waited a beat. No one came in behind her. She looked under her arm with her neck twisted to peek at the other girl.

Magenta just stood, grinning.

"No." The blonde groaned out.

"Yes." The other girl answered. She turned with a stir of splayed purple hair and sprinted away towards her car. The blonde told herself that the reason she didn't run after her was because she would have started the engine and locked her out of the car faster than she would be able to catch up.

That's what she told herself.

She wondered if she would have been right.

* * *

**A/N:** Review if you get the chance.


	5. Spiny, Whiny Babies: Prologue Part 3

**Title:** Dishpig and Snowball, Matchstick and Book Monger  
**Author:** grayglube  
**Pairing/Character:** Icegirl/Warren  
**Rating:** M

**Summary:** Life turns out to be more than busing tables and thesis statements, more than dysfunctional behavior and cigarettes on school property, more than superheroes and villains. It's life like microwaved leftovers; a hot skin, a cold center, and a soggy aftertaste.

**Spoilers/Warnings:** None. Post-Movie by two years.

**Chapter:** 5: Spiny, whiny babies. (Prologue pt. 3)

**A/N: **This is from Layla's prospective and while it is part of the "prologue" it is technically, and chronologically, years after the main story line, this applies to all vignettes in the prologue.

* * *

She wished he'd stopped bringing her such stupid ones.

She didn't like the stupid ones; they were too clingy, too in need of attention, too unable to occupy themselves.

She liked the spiny ones, the bristly ones, the ones that only liked her as much as she liked them, that was the way love was_ supposed _to be.

Will had never really gotten that, like the stupid ones he brought her, liking her more than she liked him. Her grandmother had always said that was a good thing but it really wasn't. It was just sad and silly.

The dumb ones were always so _thirsty_ and this, despite being dark and smelly and much too damp, was _her_ island, despite the fact that it wasn't an island at all but a basement but that wasn't the point. She wondered what that old saying was 'every man is an island unto himself,' or maybe it was the opposite and every man wasn't an island unto himself, or _herself _she would think, viciously, adding the addendum to the misremembered quote by someone whose name she couldn't remember, someone who obvious thought females were less island-ish than men, or maybe more island-ish if she had remembered the quote wrong, she thought that it didn't really matter because whoever had said it, or written it, was obviously misogynistic and she would have no part in that.

But that wasn't her point either.

What was, was that when the dumb ones outgrew their little patches of dirt they always came into, onto, _hers_, she didn't like that because it was _her_ patch of dirt, _her_ island. As suddenly as they came up, bored and looking to steal her dirt, _she_ would get so _thirsty_.

Maybe the dumb ones were used to living outside where they could have all the dirt they wanted at their time of choice and leisure. She didn't like that. It was rude for them to assume she was always going to be the "hostess with the mostest," the most to share, the hostess who wanted to share. She wasn't.

The dumb ones never lasted as long as they thought they would, she wasn't the only one that didn't like the dumb ones. The spiny ones, the bristly ones didn't like them at all; it was all the moving around that bothered them, the creeping and the crawling and the growing. She let the bristly ones have them. If she didn't let them have some fun they'd go back to trying to make plant babies with the mice and the mice made screechy sounds that she didn't at all like when the bristly ones tried to be nice with them.

He'd come around.

He'd even brought a nice, pretty baby for her to watch over. She'd been in a mean mood, he'd told her it smelled, told her not to let her babies near her face. She ignored him. He'd grabbed at her face and picked at her lip, rubbed at her eye.

It was true that they hurt and that her lip was a size too big and the cut oozed something thick and smelly and her eyes was puffy and when she looked to the left her shapes got all blurry, but that didn't mean he had to treat her like a baby. She wasn't a baby. Her babies were babies, and babies didn't know any better.

His touch was heavy, painfully slow; he didn't want to break bones. He'd done that before. He'd cried over it, she didn't. He'd always been such a _baby_, not a baby like her babies were babies but a crybaby who cried over things that were stupid and didn't matter.

When he didn't leave she shook red hair off her face that looked brown in the dirt and the dark, her body curving, her mouth crooked, amused. Then when one of the babies moved she registered its movements slowly, carefully, it stayed put behind him but it swayed. Hungry, tired, cranky.

Her manner was harsh, bored.

Her response was dismissive.

'Yes?'

He shook his head.

He didn't want to fight the little fights anymore, or the big ones that they knew were filled with the only things left to say that mattered. Big arguments filled with things that would ruin him, ruin her, and destroy both their lives that much more thoroughly.

He smiled at her, sadly.

Her glare went from amused to dangerous without anything in between and a swing came down inches from his head to the floor, a long, hard sweep from her favorite baby. Her most perfect, quiet, best behaved baby. It was liked a dumbbell dropping right through the roof of the house and then the first floor and then the second and then into the basement.

It didn't surprise her that he hadn't moved.

It didn't surprise him when she used the dumb stupid thing he brought to hang him upside down. It was vines, again. Stupid, silly vines.

She grabbed them harshly, pulled him higher. Getting up and leaning at a reaching and wavering angle, she peered at his face, took a good long look. Decided that, no, he wasn't at all better than the dumb ones he brought her. Too needy, too loud, too annoying.

She let go, let him fall on his big stupid head.

Laughing she laid down with her babies. All she wanted to do now was sleep. She was sleepy. He rolled on the floor. His head was harder than the floor. She grinned.

He looked at her all stupid and sad. She didn't know why he was so angry at her babies; it had been him who got them all for her. It was him that started everything. He'd been the one to wonder about her powers, pegging them as beyond what she did with them.

There once was a time she'd laid awake and thought about the things he would or had once said.

One night when he was gone she did more than think and went to the basement with the cactus from the kitchen counter.

That one was her meanest baby, but it was always the difficult ones parents most remember and love. It might not be her favorite but it was the one she loved the most, her first born, the first one she let think all by itself.

She asked him if he still liked her and how much.

He gave her a bad answer that she didn't at all like.

He said 'yes' and when he told her how much she scoffed.

He told her she wasn't a monster, was still just the girl she was before, told her that she was a hero.

She laughed and let her babies make her something nice and warm to lie on and sleep in for her, she told him she knew what he _really _thought and that all he really wanted was to make her_ his_ monster.

Her babies covered her, blacked him out of her view. She wondered if he left or if he was still there now that she was no longer listening or looking or caring enough to not go to sleep.

When she felt it she smiled, it was scratchy against her legs, it stuck its spines in her lips when she kissed it and bit it in the same moment. When she touched it it got under her nails, when she rubbed it on her skin it left her red and friction burned, when she spoke to it with harsh tones it filled her mouth and cut her gums, when she let it curl around her while she slept she liked that it felt nothing like Will, nothing like she remembered his 'loving her more than she loved him' feeling felt like.

Something crawled into her cocoon and dabbed at her lip. Aloe Vera, he really was still just a big stupid baby. She bit at it, tore it with her teeth, she liked her cuts, her bruises, her scratches, her scabs. They were the only thing to remind her how important it was to only like something as much as it liked her.

She didn't think she could like Will as much as he liked her, but she knew she could not like her babies as much as they didn't like her. She wondered if one was easier than the other, but then she stopped because that was just dumb.

* * *

**A/N:** Hope you enjoyed reading, review if you get the chance.


	6. Wayward Elbows and Towel Burns

**Title:** Dishpig and Snowball, Matchstick and Book Monger

**Author:** grayglube

**Pairing/Character:** Icegirl/Warren

**Rating:** M

**Summary:** Life turns out to be more than busing tables and thesis statements, more than dysfunctional behavior and cigarettes on school property, more than superheroes and villains. It's life like microwaved leftovers; a hot skin, a cold center, and a soggy aftertaste.

**Spoilers/Warnings:** None. Post-Movie by two years.

**Chapter:** 6: Wayward Elbows and Towel Burns

**A/N: **This is the next chapter in the main story-line and starts off days after the end of the last main storyline chapter but it makes up for lost time through various flashbacks throughout the chapter, so don't get confused.

* * *

_September 11__th__ (Friday)_

_7:33pm_

"Nice room." Layla perked.

The blonde looked around and took in the books bristling with the spines of bookmarks, the haphazard stack of folded laundry that she was too lazy to have put away for company, and the assortment of shoes thrown wildly about and couldn't really see much 'nice' behind the organized mess.

"Thanks." She answered shaking off her own opinion like a clod of dust.

"Looks different from the last time I was here and what's with the couch?" The last girl coming into the room asked after depositing herself with sprawling ease across the blonde's bed.

It was a fair question and the blonde smiled and looked sideways at the lounger. It really was too big for the too small room, but she liked it, and she needed something to lay on when she watched television.

"I got it at a yard sale; it didn't fit so I just rearranged the whole room." She lay down on it, her chest and stomach flat against it, her lungs compressed and tight and warm, and her legs thrown over the top. She let her fingers take a walk across the ragged carpeting.

Across the room Magenta smiled roughly, her head tilted sideways against the bed an arm and a leg draped half off the mattress.

"Well that's the way to do it, bay-bay." Her intonation was butch and made Layla chortle and try to smuggle the small laugh behind tight lips.

The blonde closed her eyes and hummed in acquiescence to the other girl's answer.

Layla took up a post in the heavy chair at the desk.

It was quiet for awhile as all three tried to shake off the remnants of conversations and worries and assignments that the school-day had thrown at them for six consecutive hours with rapid paced teenaged drama and frustration.

"So what are we going to do first? I told Zack the naked pillow fight would start at eight so maybe we should paint out toenails and oil ourselves up so we look good on camera," came from the bed.

"Could you be any more of a man, Magenta? You said you had a project to do, right Lo?" Layla asked all tired cheer and half-interest.

Smirking into the fabric of the lounger the blonde mumbled out some reply that made the girl curled in her chair flick her hair and send the girl on the bed a look of distaste.

"I'm frozen in shock and awe, that she never mentioned it."

The occupant of the bed looked up and then shifted her gaze from one girl to the next, they didn't return her stare and finally she huffed and sat up, boots wrinkling the bedcovers severely.

"What?" She asked.

"I just told her that you have the same project to do, but I'm guessing an overachiever like you already did it, plus the rest of your overdue homework," the figure on the lounger turned her cheek to look at the girl with dirty boots on her bed.

"You're an ass. I've got like two more weeks, that sucker's going to stay undone until the night before it's due, so suck it. And she's only Lo during the school week, Layla. On the weekends she's Lola." She flopped back down with flourish and stared up at the ceiling.

The blonde groaned and sagged weakly against the cushions.

"Wait. What? _Lola_? On the weekends? _Oh-kay_…" The chair squeaked as she shifted position, her legs were tingling.

Lo rolled over and let her socked foot tattoo a rhythm into the carpet. "It's from _Lolita_, Miss 'I'm not allowed to read books my mom hasn't already read and approved of because I'm an impressionable youth.'"

Magenta snorted and looked sideways to observe the redhead's reaction.

She did not disappoint. Raising a finger and hefting her chin to a loftier and 'holier than thou' position she started in at the blonde.

"First of all," she paused for effect.

"She stopped doing that when I was fourteen…," another pause for self-indulgence. She opened her eyes and glared at both girls waiting on her conclusion.

"And secondly I have no interest in reading pornographic works that involve the sexual abuse of children." She then lowered her chin but kept the glare and crossed her arms, awaiting the rebuttal.

Magenta and Lo exchanged amused glances, Magenta nodded assent to the other girl, offering her the opportunity to cut the redhead down by an inch or two in the name of once-banned-greatest-publications of literature-ever to be known by man.

"First of all…," Lo mocked.

After a moment of silence she continued on beat.

"_Lolita_ has been praised as one of the most socially important and literature changing works ever written."

She stopped and looked to Magenta, she nodded and the other girl went on, happy to be appreciated.

"And secondly, it is not by any means fit to be described under the term '_pornographic'_ mainly for the fact that it does not and never has fit the definition of the word pornographic, and there is in fact one scene of blatantly carnal activity in the whole book and it doesn't even involve the sexual penetration of a minor. The only real act of fornication that takes place in the book is at most a paragraph long, and is delicately handled and involves no vulgarity. It is a story of misdirected love due to severe ardor for a childhood image of what love truly is, but, alas, I digress."

Layla made a sound in her throat and rolled her eyes.

"Well thank you 'Miss Book Critic.'"

"Oh, shut up. You got learned, Lay. And anyway, you missed the point."

"Well what is _your_ point Magenta?" Layla had leaned forward in irritation and viciousness.

Magenta raised herself up on her elbows and returned the look with a small smile.

"_My_ point is on the weekends Lo is Lola. It's a joke. In the book there's a part where the guy starts saying how the girl, Dolores, is Dolly at school and Lo in the morning with one sock on and Lola in slacks and every other version of her name. Except we don't call Lo 'Dolly' because is debasing because she's not a fucking five. Get it, girl?" She smiled at the blonde, she smiled back and across the room Layla relaxed and laughed.

"What?" Lo looked over, her foot stopped its motions.

"You're not wearing slacks, though."

Silence seeped into the space between all of them.

A moment ticked by followed by another.

Magenta laughed.

Layla laughed.

Lo laughed.

And then the two smokers started to hack and left the other girl ready to pee all over the chair she was sitting in.

"That's not the point either!" Magenta yelled between coughs.

Layla settled down and sat on one of her legs and bit at her lip trying to hold in giggles as the blonde choked to death.

"What it means is we call her 'Lola' because on the weekends is the only time she ever wears any of her cute stuff, and slacks were the most fashion forward thing for women to wear at the time the book was published. Not that you would know because all you read is 'Winnie the Pooh.'"

Chocking loudly Lo made a face and silenced the room from everything but her throaty hacking. When her lungs stopped cramping and only the burn was left she looked at both worried faces and gave a small unwarranted sneeze and sniffle.

"Bless you!" The unison gave way to another fit of light girlish giggles.

"Please don't call me Lola."

"Why not?" Magenta's cried out in childlike aggression.

"Because it's fecking dumb," was all the blonde said in reply.

"Hey! I just thought of something." The redhead perked up, drawing her knees up to her chest in her excitement.

"What?" Magenta groaned expecting the worst.

The blonde lay back down on her stomach and fanned her fingers across the carpet.

"You know the girl in _Atonement_?"

Magenta hummed and Lo rolled her face into the cushions.

"Her names Lola right?"

A muffled 'yes' came from the lounger.

"Well there's that scene where she's talking to the candy guy and he goes 'I like your slacks' that's a reference, since she's so young and he's so much older and she ends up getting attacked in the movie, that's so cool."

Lo didn't have to look up to know the look Magenta had in her eyes. Mischief.

"You mean the _rape _was cool? Now I know why your mom has to approve of the books you read, Lay."

"Oh, shut up! You know that's not what I meant, but that makes sense right. I mean you guys read the book. You should know."

With a cheek pressed firm against the couch the blonde looked sideways at Layla.

"No, you're right. It makes sense. I'd never even thought about that before. Nice catch, Lay. Can't believe you mom let you see _Atonement_."

"I told you she quit being such a book and movie Nazi when I was in like the 9th grade. I watch what I want, okay. I'm not that sheltered. I even know what sex is and how to shave my legs."

"Oh, don't be such a little liar. I'm in gym class with your dumb ass, and I know for a fact that your legs didn't become that forest of fur overnight, Lay."

There was a gasp and a hiss of anger.

Then there was a laugh from the blonde.

"Heeeey! Like you've never skipped a few days because you've pulled an all-nighter and only had time in the morning to wash your hair and gargle with toothpaste."

"God, she just described my morning routine for the past month."

Magenta laughed at the blonde.

"So what are we going to do? Eat? That'd be nice. You promised you'd feed me." She whined.

With a growl Lo rolled over and planted her feet firmly on the ground and blinked away the head rush and black dots the change in position brought to her vision.

"The chicken is thawing. I'll poke it in a little." She answered the girl on her bed.

"We could watch a movie." Layla offered.

"Nah, later. We're gonna play Egyptian rat screw too and then me and Lo will teach you how to play Kentucky Rummy, Lay."

"Okay," was Layla's soft reply.

"Oh! So tell us how your first day at Max High was Lo," she chirped a moment later.

"Yeah _Lola _tell us _all_ about it. Especially the parts about the creatures with penises, and how good they looked in uniform. And the food."

The blonde looked warily over in the direction of her desk at Layla. The other girl rolled her eyes and called Magenta a 'fat-ass' before leaning back and stretching out her legs.

Slowly the girl spread out on the lounger rolled. She swished the thoughts of the day before in her head, her brain became a flask that sloshed memories of sights and scents and sounds she was familiar with, and yet not, over the sides. It was so much like a normal day at Sky High it had been too odd to place, to catalog and file away as _normal_.

Maybe because it was and it was easy to fit with normal. The first thing super-parents taught super-kids, keep your nose down and your eyes up when in public. The duality of secret identity and alter ego was ingrained as deeply as DNA.

It was exactly like school with Magenta and Layla was, except everyone was sans powers, but not, surprisingly, sans egos.

It was highschool. It was typical. It was _nice_.

Above all it was work, hard work. The type that left no leeway for powers to make up for smarts.

She liked that.

She didn't tell them that. She didn't think they'd get it, not even Magenta.

One person might have gotten it. _He _would have gotten how it felt. She wondered if she'd ever get a chance to talk to him about it. She wondered if he'd care about her first day at Maxville High, wondered if "normal" was something he thought was nice too, like sheets warmed up before you slipped under them at 3am or sitting half-in half-out the kitchen window above an empty and dry sink, smoking, when the morning was fresh and wet or the way studying for a test and not knowing whether it was the next day or next week and then finding out it's that day and acing it with nothing more than a forty-five minute cram session felt.

With quick apprehension that she pushed towards the peripheries of her brain with a process that was made perfect by practice she knew somewhere that she wanted to talk to _him_ about it.

She could have had the same talk with Magenta, but it was different. It was one thing to know the girl's mind worked the same way as hers did, knowing _his_ worked the same way, though, was different.

Because _he_ was a different creature altogether.

He wasn't a girl she could gab with on Friday nights in her room; he was a guy, undeniably male. She'd be lying if she said such a distinction didn't freak her out sometimes. Where could such a distinction go, where would they, how could they. She didn't want that, she liked friends and goldfish and cinnamon disk candy, not romance. Romance was boring, romance was for people with jobs and cars and apartments and health insurance and birth control.

Romance wasn't made for teenagers, fucking around was for teenagers. She didn't want to fuck around. The concept was crass and off-putting.

It scattered her thoughts like a puzzle whacked off a table, like a cards being shuffled, to think of him in terms of _boy_. But ever since their "forced" encounter at the Paper Lantern, via a purple streaked girl with a streak of pure vicious glee running through her moral fiber, there was something there.

Something that wasn't friends or goldfish or cinnamon disk candy or romance or fucking around.

Not connection.

Understanding.

Like there's "no loyalty among thieves" understanding, like soldiers fighting separate battles but knowing what was in each other's heads, like wolves sniffing out the same prey. It was competition and kinship.

"…-s' out, care to share?" Magenta cut through her flimsy thoughts like hot steel through a limb. It hurt to stop her line of thought.

"Yeah, I'm just thinking of where to start." She answered and eyed both the girls.

* * *

**Maxville High (September 10****th****, Thursday)**

_The bus had eight other kids on it. _

_Three were in her British Literature class._

_None were in her AP European History Class. _

_One was in her Latin class._

_She paid little attention to the other four, she listened just enough to know two girls that seemed to be close friends were in Calculus together and that the solitary boy on the bus was in AP US History after he'd been asked what he was going for by a waif of a girl who offered that she herself was in AP English Composition. _

_When she entered the school she could tell three things from the first five minutes alone._

_One: They __**really**__ liked their school colors, blue and silver were on everything from the floor tiling to the doorframes._

_Two: They liked things big. The pillars as markers every ten feet down the main hallway, and the large rotunda with their library as the focal point proved that. The excessively long driveway leading to the school had left her speechless, she found herself rolling her eyes every time they went over a speed bump. There were eight. She knew, she'd counted._

_Three: That cost had not been an option when they built the place. From the televisions in the hallways and classrooms that were plasma LCD, and the electronic sign in front of the school driveway that told the date and upcoming events and even the temperature._

_It was cold in the entrance way and she would later mark the temperature change as something that had to do with all the windows they'd put in. The stairwells were the worst, every one of them had floor to ceiling paneled windows going up the thirty to forty feet of the wall. She didn't like it; it made her breath puff out of her mouth like tiny, sad clouds. She would have to remember to bring her scarf from then on._

_They all had come in through the front doors, holding them for whoever was behind them with an air of nonchalance and flippancy. _

_The woman in the attendance nook in the space next to the nurse's office on the left told them to sign in and gave them each a schedule that had been banded together with the others in a small manila envelope. She told them, as they huddled together in front of the built in barrier that served as a receiving while she went over the bell schedule, that they would all be called down into guidance later in the week to 'chat' about their new school experiences._

_She followed up by reaching out for a walky-talky that lounged in its charging stand next to her computer and pressed the button. _

"_Chess, Bill, Rocky, Sam, can two of you come down to attendance. I have eight students in the work-study program that need to be taken to their classes. Over."_

_There had been a crackle of static and then a beep._

"_Hey, Elise. Sam's out in the parking lot right now and Rocky subbing in the study hall so me and Bill will come down. Ten-five on how many."_

_The woman, Elise, let one long red fingernail clack on the metal of a clipboard on the counter. She pressed the side of the device to reply and repeat._

"_There's eight of them. So you and Bill can each take four." She let go of the button on the side and waited._

"_Ten-four. We'll be there in a few minutes, can you tell them to wait for awhile. Bill doesn't have a walky on him and he's down over by Sharron. I'll tell you when I get him."_

"_Not a problem. Thanks, Chess."_

_She put the walky-talky back down in its cradle and smiled at all of them. Lo decided that she liked the woman. She was small and a bit plump and might have been a mix of Greek and some Latin or Spanish descent, had __**spectacular **__nails, dressed very smartly for a woman her age, and had done her eyeliner beautifully. She looked aged but competent in her job. She seemed to be a woman who could be either pleasant or dismissive depending on who you were and how nice you were._

"_Well. They'll be here soon. You can wait on the benches." She pointed at the benches at the opposite wall placed in front of a bulletin board with plaques that noted who was on honor roll and principles honor roll and who was an AP Scholar and a Regents Scholar and so on and so forth until they had run out of space for plaques with names on them._

_Lo noted the expensive television hanging above the board that played a loop of the same slide presentation on school regulations about their "no smoking" policy and the bell policy and the lateness policy and five other policies that she couldn't remember._

_She sat for a moment by herself and soon thought that her time would be better spent talking to the attendance woman. She left her large duffel on the bench and went over._

_Standing at the counter she waited to be acknowledged. After a few seconds the woman stopped her fingers with a final click of the mouse, probably X-ing out of whatever she was doing, attendance records __**probably**__._

"_What do you need?" She asked with a smile._

"_Nothing. Just came over to say hello. Hello."_

"_Hello back. Is this your first year in the program?"_

"_No. I was just at Long Point last year. That's where they send the juniors. It was a lot smaller than this school."_

"_So what do you go for at the magnet school?"_

_She avoided answering quickly in order to come up with a lie that sounded good. She just spit it out, not thinking about it very much._

"_Nursing." She blurted thinking of Spex._

"_Oh! Good for you hun! My sister's a nurse over at the nursing home past the supermarket up here. You know the one?"_

_She didn't._

"_Oh yeah! I think that's where we start our clinical rounds later this year."_

_The lie was so easy to tell; normal was an easy enough disguise to slip in to._

"_Nursing's a tough job, but there's always the need for them. Especially now. Do you think you'll go for your RN?"_

"_Yes. Definitely."_

_Lie._

"_That's really grea…-"_

_The ringing of the phone next to her computer cut her off. She let it go unanswered and it stopped mid-ring as someone else in the main office next door to her post answered it. She could hear a muted 'Maxville Junior-Senior Highschool, this is the main office how can I help you,' through the open door at the back of the attendance woman's small cubby-like 'office.' _

"_That's great." She finished her thought and continued on._

"_What are you taking here? Going for the credits huh?"_

"_No, actually. I just always wanted to take some of the classes. I mean, I have to get the credits, but I really wanted to take the classes. I'm taking British literature, European history, and Latin."_

"_Those are some very heavy classes, girl. But if you want to get something you always have to start with a good education."_

"_I totally agree!"_

_Lies, lies, lies. She was getting good at putting them all together and making something sweet out of them. It was a bitter pill to swallow knowing that in her world made out of superheroes and powers and saving the day that being good at lying meant you were growing up enough to put on a mask that wasn't made out of spandex to disillusion the world of __**citizens**__ out there._

_Lying effectively was like learning how to make the soufflé rise; a recipe made out of careful ingredients and careful care and a dash of truth to make it savory enough to swallow._

_The walky-talky crackled with the static of a screwy voice. Radio interference._

_Elise motioned Lo to hold her thought with one perfectly veneered finger and answered the walky._

"_Ten-five on that."_

"_I said me and Bill are coming down now. And when Sam comes in tell him to go down to the cafeteria to meet Rocky."_

"_Okey Dokey. Will do. See you in a minute."_

_She set the device down and returned her attention._

_Lo sagged and crossed her arms on the counter and played with the pen attached by a stringy coil to the sign-up sheet._

"_Well, they'll be here soon. I'm glad you came over to chat with me, gives me something to do besides check off 'lates' and 'tardies'." _

"_No, it's alright. Just glad to have someone to talk to." She smiled. Her stomach churned._

_Two men in navy windbreakers came around the corner. One was a shorter than average, large white man with sandy hair and a tired look on his face, the other was a taller, but no less large black man with a shaved head, mustache, and bulbous eyes too large for his head. The first looked a bit like the bald third of the three stooges except not bald and the second looked like an aging bouncer who was no longer young enough to be a bouncer, he looked very squamous which she liked to think meant frog, because it sounded like a word that someone could describe a frog with even though it had to do with frogs. _

_She retrieved her duffel bag and was split up into a group that had the only boy from the bus, a girl with horribly dyed raccoon like hair, black underneath and bottled chemical blonde on top, and the girl who would be in Latin with her, she had been cursed with a horrible teenage case of splattered acne all over her face in red bumps and pocked skin, and it wasn't the type of thing a girl could recover from it seemed._

_They didn't have lockers._

_They didn't have "classmates."_

_They didn't have affiliations._

_They had their book bags to carry around all day._

_They had strange people with nasty eyes staring at them._

_They had the types of connections prisoners of war had, they looked after themselves but only talked to each other._

_Her Latin class was taught by a plump woman with hair kept up by a pencil in an attractive but tight looking knot. _

_She knew no one but the girl with bad skin in the class._

_The girl told her that her name was Cora and tried to initiate conversations that ended after one or two follow-up replies from the blonde. The class was small and there was little on the 'boy menu' to interest herself or Magenta._

_She planned to tell her as much._

_British Literature was slightly better with three other girls from the bus in it. They all seemed to be close friends. The raccoon haired girl was among them, she was by far the least attractive in the trio. One girl in the group was tall, her face structured and odd in a way that made her look pretty but her build was man-ish along with tall, she looked like an Amazon and that killed what was pretty about her face. The last girl was short, under five-foot, and she was the leader of them whether they knew it or not. She was the iron fist inside the velvet glove. _

_Lo couldn't help but be a bit jealous of that one. _

_She spent the period listening to the heavily mustached professor go over why they would be focusing on Beowulf and Chaucer in the first quarter, King Arthur in the second, Shakespeare and his Titus Andronicus in the third, and Romanticism in the fourth._

_The blonde hoped they would watch "Titus" it was good movie it was blood and violence and revenge and things that were good to watch a play act out in movie form._

_She almost 'squeed' in girlish joy when her teacher told the class the only reason he taught Titus Andronicus was so they could watch the movie._

_AP European History was the best. It had two other people in it and they spent the period taking notes themselves, they got a paperback textbook companion. She was going to defile it with annotations when she got home._

_She handed in her summer assignment, carefully annotated and correlated with highlights of florescent green and painful pinks and vivid oranges. _

_It pleased her to get the look she got from the middle-aged softball coach/history teacher. It was surprise and astonishment and shock and awe and maybe even a little fear that the assignment was not only done but overdone and then overdone with joy._

_She liked leaving that impression. She did what she decided to do well, and she knew it and wanted people to know that she knew it. _

_After classes she had found out that the buses they went on had __**everyone**__ on them. She nixed the idea of going home at two-ten in the afternoon. Three-fifteen bus it was. She killed the hour by finding out where kids went to smoke. _

_The parking lot was too empty, she would not risk sitting between cars that could pull out at any moment. She didn't think anyone else would either._

_It took her twenty minutes, not because she searched for twenty minutes but because it took that long for a boy with a cigarette tucked behind his ear to walk by. She tailed him as he made his way over into the parking lot at the very far side of the school by a chain-link fence by the tennis courts she. _

_Beyond the fence was a maintenance back-road for an apartment complex, no cars drove on it unless they were from the apartment complex parking lots. She deduced that they were at the back of the apartment complex. She decided that the reason he gate was unlocked to get there was because many students lived in the apartment complex and walked to school, and that it was where juniors who didn't have parking privileges on school grounds left their cars when they drove to school._

_Once there she found that the boy had met up with a group of girls that looked like they were smokers. It wasn't just their cigarettes that gave them away either. They really and truly looked exactly like what you thought the kids sneaking off school-grounds for cigarettes looked like._

_They didn't speak to her and she didn't initiate a pointless conversation either._

_She smoked and left and didn't look back and got on her bus and went home._

* * *

"So that's it. Bo-oo-oo-or-ing." Magenta sing-songed.

"Well it was, it was the first day Mag. It's supposed to be boring. If it was fun they'd call it 'carnival' instead of 'school.'"

"That was dumb." Layla stated while picking at her cuticles. She gave up and bit it off and then sucked on the finger when blood welled in her nail bed.

The blonde groaned.

Magenta snarked something that Lo didn't quite hear and then flopped back on the bed without grace.

"I'm hungry." Layla announced loudly.

"I need a smoke. I don't wanna get up." Magenta whined, twice as loud.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shaddup." Lo huffed, tired and lethargic against the lounger.

It was the start of a long night; they marked it with a small space of lazy silence.

Magenta rolled off the bed, her knees hit the floor hard and she crashed down onto her stomach and crawled like a worm over to Lo.

Opening one eye to study her friend, the blonde smiled.

"What?"

Relaxing on her stomach with a closed fist propping up her chin Magenta just looked up from behind her fringe.

"I was just wondering where Miranda is."

The blonde opened her eyes quickly and bypassed Magenta to look at Layla who had turned around in interest.

"Who's Miranda?"

Pregnant silence filled the small room.

"She's my…aunt."

Lie.

Layla looked confused and ran a hand under the length of her hair and fluffed it out with a nervous gesture.

"Oh."

There was a pause.

"I thought you lived with your mom." Layla finished her thought.

The conversation had taken a wrong turn, the type of turn that made things fall off cliffs.

"My mom's not around…, she's sick. She stays at the lab. My aunt stays to make sure I'm okay. When I was in tenth grade she let me stay here by myself and she showed up once or twice a week to check in on me and called every night and it was just too weird to stay in the house by myself. So now she just lives here instead of at the base and goes in every few days when they call her in."

Not quite a lie, it had a flavoring of truth. It was too long to be a complete lie, she'd explained too much. She wasn't as good at lying with the big stuff, she babbled when faced with the issues that took the lying skills of lie-masters to weave.

Layla looked deeply saddened for a moment; she knew she'd asked something taboo. Lo knew Magenta hadn't meant to bring it up, the girl couldn't blame her for asking an innocuous question.

Layla would have asked eventually, she was a curious girl; the type to wonder why no one who filled a parent position was home.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know." Layla apologized.

There was a strange turn of the moment where no one breathed, as if the first one who did would lose a boob or something equally important.

"Can I ask you a question?" Layla asked softly, her gaze was heavy lidded and her tone was solemn.

The blonde didn't want to say yes, but she did.

"Yeah."

"Where's your dad?"

With the flick of a switch the moment shifted. Lo laughed loudly and for real.

"What's so funny?" Layla was shocked, at first the outburst must have made her think the blonde was yelling.

Sitting up and scrubbing her face with a palm Lo put her elbows on her knees and let a strand of hair fall into her face.

"No, sorry. It's just…well, hmmm. My mom and my dad, well it's kinda weird actually." Lo didn't know how to say it.

Magenta who'd lay silent for a few minutes rolled onto her back and propped her torso up with her elbows, smirked at Layla and then tossed the same look to the blonde.

"Her mom was lesbo."

"Magenta!"

Lo laughed.

"No, it's okay." She unhooked her glasses from the belt loop at her hip and put them on. There was a smudge. She cleaned them and put them on again.

"She was. That's why it's weird to talk about. I mean, I don't mind, but, people look at me like I'm just a mistake. I'm not saying I wasn't, but, my mom always said I was a 'happy mistake.' She always wanted kids anyway, so it was okay with her and dad worked on the same task team for awhile so they were friends. When my mom was still active she worked at Global Guardians and I was born…no, wait…conceived during the annual post-induction ceremony party. I'm pretty sure booze was involved. I see my dad every once in awhile, though it's weird because he's not really sure where he fits into my life. And I don't think I'm sure either."

"Oh…" Layla nodded.

It was an awkward conversation to be having.

"You should tell her what you told me about how when you grew up you didn't know what boys were." Magenta suggested.

The blonde groaned.

"What!?" Layla squeaked.

"Yeah, so anyway when I was little I didn't go to the base and the only one who came over was Miranda and the only neighbor we had at the time was a single mom with a little girl. So until I was like seven I thought there was no such thing as boys and when I saw them in my class I came home and told my mom I had some really ugly girls in my class. And that's how I discovered boys. The end."

"Wow. That's…" Layla had no idea what to say after she'd started.

"Sad." Magenta added while biting the inside of her cheek.

"Wait a second. So, if you've lived here since you were that little how come you getting go to grade school with us? We don't live that far away from you; you're in the school district."

Pausing, the blonde tilted her head and looked at Layla, as if processing the question.

"Well, I got my powers when I was really little, so I stayed at the base. They have a program for kids like me. It's kinda only really for active supers that work for globe-guards, though."

The cordless phone on the dresser rang, the ring was "ode to joy" it was preprogrammed into the phone. She answered and the conversation was put on pause.

It was Miranda.

Layla put her feet on the desk and closed her eyes.

Magenta not-so-stealthily listened in on the conversation by pressing herself up against the blonde.

"I'm hungry." Magenta whined.

"You're annoying." Lo hissed, her hand over the phone's mouthpiece.

"She tries. Hard." Layla elaborated from the desk.

* * * * * * * * * *

_8:54pm_

_(The Paper Lantern)_

He was working until eleven.

He was on dish duty.

He was drastically bored.

He pointedly ignored replying to Magenta's text message.

_Lo's, im hungry!!! BRING ME FOOD!---**8:03pm**_

He purposely ignored her follow-up.

_Pleeeez…ill steal lolita's panties for ya. FOOD!!!---**8:14pm**_

He rolled his eyes at her almost up-to-date update.

_NM re: FOOD. Lolita is cooking---**8:23pm**_

He stopped looking at his phone after she sent:

_did u kno she mans the oven in the nude? & that she doesn't have curtains?;p---**8:46pm**_

He dropped a dish thinking about how hot it got around ovens.

He popped a piece of ice from a half-drunk glass of water between his teeth.

It melted, but not fast enough before he shattered it with a forceful crunch. When he swallowed it as a lukewarm gulp and when popped another one he rolled the getting smaller by the second cube across his tongue and a sudden unwanted wave of wet heat swirled in his mouth to accompany the turn his thoughts took.

'_Smooth ice is a paradise for those who dance with expertise.'_

It came to him too quickly to be shrugged off and not make him think on it.

Not able to recall where he'd read it or who had written it didn't even bother him. What bothered him was the way the quote had the word 'ice' in it, because, yeah he was gnawing on cubes of it but that wasn't why he'd thought of it, and he knew it.

The bit about 'dance' made him think 'legs' and then actual 'dances,' but the bit about dances was an afterthought he tried to use to make his thoughts trail to safer places because legs made him think of thighs, and ice and thighs in the same thought made him think of _her_ thighs, and _her_ thighs made the anatomy between _his_ pulse pleasantly and altogether inappropriately and thinking about that throb made him think of _it,_ between cold thighs and cold thighs were much to attractive an option to think about because they were _hers_ and he could feel the sweat on the back of his neck, sticky and ready to roll, so he tried to think of cold thighs in any other sense besides _hers_.

Who else had cold thighs?

Her.

And…

'Shit!'

He couldn't think of anythi…-

'Dead people.'

He did not want to fuck dead people. The pulse dancing a rhythm against denim and the metal teeth of his zipper dulled itself.

'Not that cold thighs necessarily meant dead people. They could mean it was cold out, or you've been swimming, or they're icy…fuck! _Or someone's been rubbing ice cubes on their thighs..or someone els...-_STOP. Think ice sculpture. Too cold. Way too cold, _not if I…-_'

The stick of sweat on the back of his neck spread between his shoulders and he felt a line roll down to the small of his back and stop where his jeans began.

Another crackle followed the ice cube he threw between his teeth.

"Yo, man."

He dropped the glass half-filled with ice cubes into the murky water punctuated by a scattering of soap bubbles. The water lolled and splashed up, a soap-sud pegged his eye.

Rubbing at it made it tear. He blinked away one burn and tried to not rub at another.

'Great timing.'

"You okay?" A-mystery was if nothing else, perceptive.

Pulling at the collar of his tee-shirt he kept his eyes on the sink and fumbled for a rag. He'd been standing doing nothing for a good five minutes.

"I'm fine."

"You're sweating pretty profusely," the other boy commented.

Warren swirled the rag in the dirty water for a distraction and tried to remember the last time he'd ever heard someone use the word 'profusely' in a sentence, he couldn't.

Probably because no one ever had.

"It's hot in here." His throat was dry. He pulled the rag out of the sink and wrung it out; the burn of cotton fibers corded into a towel-like rope was comforting against his palm.

"You're steaming."

The rag was too. The water had been cool when he pulled the rag out. The steam on the rag and the rope he was twisting the washcloth into made him think of towel whipping, he could heat it up enough to sting and sizzle something cold.

Another drop slid down.

Lower.

Another.

He thanked every deity he'd ever read about he'd worn a black shirt.

He yanked at the bottom of his shirt, it made a sucking sound as it unstuck from his chest.

"I need a cigarette."

A-mystery yanked the threadbare dishrag out from his twisting fingers, and waved it in the direction of the back door.

"Dragon lady left; went to go pick up one of the kids from piano or cello or whatever…go. I'll cover." He grinned and shoved the other boy in the direction of the door and took over Warren's post in front of the sink.

He didn't stay a second longer in the kitchen than the length of time it took to slam the screen door open and let it crash behind him. Thumbing out a cigarette and checking around the corner of the building to make sure no one was putting the garbage out he sighed heavily and sucked in shaky breath.

Slamming the lid of the green dumpster down, he hopped up and lit up. The nicotine burned against the lingering sensation of ice in his throat.

Little reminders.

He rolled his tee-shirt sleeves up to the shoulder and tried to stop his body from steaming in the cool, just-got-dark, nightfall.

Deep in his pocket his phone hummed. Forgetting that he was ignoring it he regretted opening the text message. There was nothing written. He thought it was a mistake. The subject line read: **'_present 4 u_'** and there was a pixilated paperclip next to it.

His thumb rolled over the right arrow onto the icon. His thumb clicked '_ok_.' His brain had ceased functioning.

There was reason he'd ignored Magenta.

Sometimes she was grumpy.

Sometimes she was cranky.

Sometimes she was funny.

Sometimes she was witty.

Sometimes she was an asshole.

Right now, she was just cruel.

The picture was camera phone quality but it got bigger when he clicked on it and imagination made up for what bad photo resolution lacked.

She _was_ in front of the oven.

She _wasn't _naked.

Her hair was up and her glasses were on and she was brandishing a two-pronged fork at her photographer.

But she _was_ without pants and bra from the look of the dark circles punctuating the wife-beater she was wearing.

Her panties were black.

She looked angry.

There was something in her other hand, the picture did not allow for someone who didn't already know what it was to guess at what she was holding.

A block of ice.

Somewhere deep down in himself he hoped Magenta was a slow ducker, because what had been a dull, distracting, throb before, was burning hot and heavy between his legs, rubbing stiff against denim that had all too suddenly become too tight.

He took a drag. It did nothing, but he'd rather ignore his discomfort than deal with it currently. He could last three hours. And the drive home. And maybe even the whole night. He'd find out.

It was a fucking picture; it wasn't sitting on his lap, not in the sense that it was an actual half-naked girl in his lap anyway.

Far from it.

His phone flashed in his hand. It wasn't Magenta.

It was _her._

He answered.

"Hello?"

"Did Magenta _really _just send you something?" Her tone was frantic.

It wasn't _her_. It was Layla.

He didn't say anything and it just did more to justify her panic.

"_Waaarrrren_, why did you have to open it? Wait. Don't answer that. I know you can't see the pictures until after you see them." She groaned and there was loud background noise, it sounded like someone fell.

Layla said a word Warren didn't think she knew, even more surprising, she didn't apologize for it.

"Is she upset?" He asked.

There was a female screech, it was shrill and drew blood away from his groin and up to his ears. Layla was silent for a few moments. He was about to remind her that he was still on the line when she made a sound of apprehension and remembered him.

"Yes. She is. At Magenta," she added quickly.

"She almost got her in the head with this piece of ice; her aim's pretty bad, though. There's a hole in her kitchen wall. They called 'no powers' and Magenta just jumped the couch and Dolores already kicked her pretty hard in the knee and then Magenta nailed her in the eye on accident so Dolores decked her in her eye an…-"

He puffed on his cigarette; his blood was back to proper circulation throughout his body. He sent a silent 'thank you' across the phone line to Layla for that. Maybe it was just her tone or maybe just the fact that she was _Layla_ that did it, but suddenly he was down from raging and back at a slow throb.

"I'll delete the photo."

There was a breath and then a sigh. "Thanks."

"Hmmm." He couldn't think of anything better or more eloquent to say that was appropriate.

"Oh! Hey! Wait a second."

He kicked at the dumpster with the heel of his boot. It sang a hollow bang into the night air already filled with the sounds of the roadway and plates slamming into sinks from the kitchen.

"What?" But she was already gone, there was no one on the other line, but Layla hadn't hung up. By the time he figured out what was about to happen and whose voice was going to be in his ear next it was too late.

"Are you there?" Her breathing was haggard, she coughed roughly.

It sounded great, beyond great, because it was _her_ and he suddenly, desperately, wished it was Magenta or Layla or anyone but her holding the phone on the other side of conversation.

"Yeah." His tone was careful and measured and his blood was no longer balanced when she heaved and sucked in a labored breath.

He could imagine her standing in the middle of her kitchen, food burning, well Layla had probably taking care of that, the redhead was practical like that, but yes, he could imagine it.

Her standing in her kitchen shaded and sharp looking in the bad kitchen lighting, in panties and a too thin wife-beater, bloody lipped and bruised, chest heaving and heavy, sweaty in a way he knew he was almost guaranteed never to see, clenching the phone with a white-knuckled grip, barefoot and tousled, he knew what he would call the look if he actually saw it; freshly fucked.

Not that she was, but people who fought looked like that after going a round or two. There was a similar concept between the realms of fighting and fucking. He wouldn't call it passion so much as dominate or submit, no matter where you came out in either situation he imagined there was something wild in it, primal, savage, scary, intoxicating.

The silence made his guts churn.

"Layla told me you saw it." Her voice was steady, monotonous.

"…" He couldn't think of anything to say. So he nodded and then realized she wouldn't be able to take that as a reply. His cigarette had about four long drags left on it. He took one to make a sound and make sure she knew he was still there.

Waiting for her to set the pace.

"I saw it." She stated, simply. Easily.

She went on.

"It's bad isn't it?" He could _hear_ the cringe in her voice.

He spit out the first thing in his head.

"At least you weren't naked in front of her."

Stupid.

"It's not that kind of sleepover, Warren." She said his name with something that sounded a lot like resignation, like a woman climbing the gallows and giving her final wave to the crowd.

"Sorry."

"I know. But if she could, she'd steal my curtains and ambush me in the shower."

He thought of her taking a shower.

He thought of her bedroom without curtains on the windows.

"I heard you punched her." He blurted.

"I _lovetapped_ her. She elbowed me, I punched her. She busted my lip. I busted her knee. I snapped her phone in half, she knocked a hole in my fucking wall, and Layla flipped the chicken and watched it happen. We're not so big on potted plants over here. I'd feel worse if she broke us up." There was a clink of something against the phone.

"Layla said _you_ threw the ice and that made the hole."

"Yeah, like _I _said. Magenta did it. Stupid bitch ducked."

"Uh-hmmm."

"I think you should send her a half-naked photo of yourself. It's only fair, War."

"GET OFF MY LINE MAGENTA!"

"OKAY! Okay. I'm gone. I'm serious, Warren. Do it. Send it. Even playing field or killing field, whatever with your however."

There was a click.

"Warren?"

"Yeah."

There was a long pause. She exhaled. He knew she had lit a cigarette.

He inhaled his not-quite-last-drag and waited.

"Neve…- no, sorry, not never mind…just I don't know this is…it's just…-"

"Did you bust her up?"

"…"

He smiled because he knew she was gaping at his question.

"Because I figure you can take care of yourself, and I won't say 'don't apologize' because it sounds weird and…"

He paused and thought about what he was going to say and how she would take it.

She'd take it the right way.

Viciously.

Perfectly.

It might make her laugh, it was worth a try.

"…send _Zack_ a picture, make it a _good_ one. Ambush _her_."

She laughed; it was raw, husky, made his blood rush.

"You know I would but I know you'd get more enjoyment of her snapping his phone in half so he can't call you anymore."

He laughed because he had thought of that.

He liked that she caught it.

"I hadn't thought about that."

And then her tone changed. He heard her take a drag and he couldn't tell if it made her feel sarcastic or brave or stupid or any number of other things for what she said next.

Her tone was bold and angry maybe or maybe just mock angry.

Either way she sounded dangerous, predatory.

"Don't bullshit me Warren or I'll make you owe _me_ a picture."

Click.

She hung up.

A garbage bag nailed him in the head.

"Dragon lady's back. Throw that in there for me, would ya? Thanks." A-Mystery turned and walked back the way he had come, his footsteps loud.

Warren wondered how he missed hearing them to begin with.

Shock, maybe.

He shoved his phone back into his pocket and jumped off the top of the dumpster, flicked the burned out filter of his Marlboro out onto the asphalt, the cherry had fallen off at some point, he couldn't tell you when, and he retrieved the bag from the spot where it landed after it was thrown at his face.

Shoving the lid of the dumpster back he threw the bag in and slammed the lid shut, it rattled the whole bin, but not nearly as harshly as _she_ had rattled him with her parting shot.

* * *

**A/N: **This chapter was supposed to be much longer but because I wanted to get something up for you guys to read I decided to cut it down and make it a two-part and then three-part chapter, so since this chapter is going to have two other "parts" to it I won't put prologues between them, so to simplify just know that chapter 7 and 8 will be a continuation and then 9 will be a prologue chapter. Anyway up next will be a flashback to what went down at the paper lantern, another to a pre-driver's meeting, also Magenta and Layla have a sorta-kinda-maybe heart to heart.


	7. The Mode and the Method

**Title:** Dishpig and Snowball, Matchstick and Book Monger

**Author:** grayglube

**Pairing/Character:** Icegirl/Warren

**Rating:** M

**Summary:** Life turns out to be more than busing tables and thesis statements, more than dysfunctional behavior and cigarettes on school property, more than superheroes and villains. It's life like microwaved leftovers; a hot skin, a cold center, and a soggy aftertaste.

**Spoilers/Warnings:** None. Post-Movie by two years.

**Chapter:** 7: The Mode and the Method

**A/N: **This is a continuation of the last chapter mainly because it takes place on the same night as the last chapter. The parts of the prologue will pick up with chapter 9. Since last chapter was so Lo heavy this chapter has ample amounts of Warren and the last of the flashbacks to the night at the Paper Lantern after Magenta ditches Lo.

* * *

_September 11__th__ (Friday)_

_9:08pm_

_(Lo's House)_

"Where is it?"

"Where's what?"

"Seriously, give it."

"Give what?"

"I swear to god I will slaughter you, Magenta, give me my phone."

"I don't have it."

"Shit."

"What?"

The blonde groaned.

"Never mind you don't have it. No powers."

"No powers what?"

"No powers brawling."

"Now? Why? What did _I _do?"

"I know where my phone is."

"Where?"

"The Paper Lantern."

Magenta grimaced.

"Okay, wait! Not my fault."

"Yes, it is. No powers, now. Call it."

The blonde took off her glasses.

"Uhhhh, fine. No powers…but! Still, not my fault that _you_ left _your _phone, _and_ sooooo not fair that we have to do this again."

She took off her earrings and rings.

"It is sooooo _fair_, plus I'm still slightly pissed about Wednesday and very pissed about the last hour. Ready?"

Magenta put out her cigarette and pushed the coffee table out of the way with her foot.

"Yeah. But no biting, scratching, hair pulling, hits to the tits."

The blonde raised an eyebrow.

"Fine. But no kidney shots or Vulcan crotch kicks."

The other girl nodded once.

Lo sprang from off the couch and delivered a kick to the shin. Magenta tackled.

Layla watched from the living room's archway as the two wrestled and threw punches, one hit Lo in the arm, one hit Magenta in the ribs, Lo grappled Magenta down to the carpet and in return got a slide across the carpet on her back when Magenta bared down and forced her up across the floor.

There was a haphazard kick and a few elbows, someone banged their head against the wall, one ended up on the receiving end of a head-butt, rug-burn formed on unprotected knees and elbows, a heel-kick to a hip, a roll, a slam, a grunt when a palm struck sternum, a yelp when hair got stuck under a hand, and seven minutes later…Layla knew because she watched the minutes go by on the green fluorescent LED of the DVD player under the television, the fight ended with panting and sweaty faces.

The two scrapping girls fell away from each other and gave half-hearted nudging kicks to each other shins and unswelled fresh bruises as they gasped and hacked up at the ceiling.

"You're an asshole," Lo coughed.

"You hit like a girl," Magenta rasped.

Lo punched the other girl under the ribs and laughed and chocked when Magenta screeched and rolled away from her.

"Bitch."

"Oh suck my dick."

Layla rolled her eyes and sat on the couch.

She picked up the remote. The television came to life with a flash and across the room on the floor both girls looked at each other and let out dramatic sighs.

"What! It's after nine, my show is on!"

"I hate this show." Magenta rolled over weakly and groaned.

"I hate you." Lo glanced over at the show playing in her living room.

Antique's Road Show. She'd laugh if her ribs didn't hurt so much.

"I hate you more; you totally kicked me in the boob on purpose."

"Finished yet, children?" Layla eyed them from the couch, relaxed and unscathed.

"Yeah. I guess. Magenta get up and get the books," Lo replied making it a point not to look at the girl next to her on the carpet.

"Uh, fine. But I'm not a dog you know."

She groaned as she picked herself up from the floor.

"No, you're not. But you are my girl-slave until I have no longer have a lingering urge to kill you for that picture."

Lo took sick satisfaction at the limp that was there when Magenta walked, not that she was feeling any better herself.

The other girl's response wasn't bad either; begrudging consent to get beat on for the after effects of bullshit.

"I've got to go bring the scraps from dinner out," she announced raising herself up onto her elbows to eye Layla.

"Out where?" The redhead asked taking her eyes off the television for a moment.

"To the deer. It's what we do in this house."

Lo got up and walked out into the kitchen. Soft shuffling and the slam of the screen backdoor shook the quiet of the house.

Clicking the television to mute Layla waited for Magenta to return, when she did it was with a textbook stuffed with papers, she let it boom onto the carpet, shaking the floor, with a flip of her wrist.

"I brought the book."

"Classy," the redhead commented giving a furtive look over her shoulder.

Magenta shoved the book with her foot and dropped a notebook on top of it with a slap.

Heart hammering and with suddenly sweaty palms that she rubbed against her jeans Layla sprung into the question that had been on her mind ever since the topic had been brought up hours earlier.

"So, was that whole thing about her mom and her dad and Miranda the truth or…well…," Layla couldn't finish her sentence before Magenta turned to her and gave her a half-lidded look, or as much of one as her swelled eye could accommodate since it couldn't lift up nearly that far for an even effect.

"Well, what?"

Layla found her voice.

"Do you think I'm that naïve? I mean really? I mean…," Magenta cut her off.

"You mean you don't want to ask Lo because you know it's a sensitive topic, so instead you're asking me something I have _no_ right to tell you, and don't give me that look because she never even told me any of what _I _know herself, I just kind of figured it out."

Retracting back into the couch Magenta rubbed a hand over the unbruised side of her face and leaned forward with her elbows on her rug-burned knees and her fringe falling over her face.

"Know what?" Layla pressed.

"It's just, jeez Lay, I mean Lo told me about her mom being lesbo and her dad not being around and all that but everything else I just don't ask about, but I can say that, yeah, her mom _is _'sick' and I wouldn't ask about it because there's just some shit that isn't kosher."

"What about Miranda, what does she do? Because I doubt she's Lo's aunt."

The redhead didn't move her eyes from the muted screen, someone was getting a vase appraised and on the other part of the couch Magenta glared.

"I don't really know, listen Layla I'm not being a dick here it's just that half the shit I know is because my mom knew Lo's mom, or met her, or whatever and she talked about it once, I just sort of put two and two together from the last name and everything. It's nothing. Drop it."

Something angry boiled up and spilled over into Layla's mouth at the 'drop it,' she let her feelings on the matter be known with an accusing glance at the other girl and a harsher tone shading her words.

"Oh, I get it. It's just one of those things everybody knows about but nobody asks about because it's rude right? Fine."

She unmuted the television.

Magenta got up.

"That is not what I meant. Don't think I'm keeping you out of the loop, but it's her business and if you want me to be real clear then I will. Right now the situation is like when Zach was pressing Will for all the info on Warren's dad and Will wouldn't indulge him, that's you and me right now."

She took a breath and brushed her bangs back.

"And you don't even know it because the majority of the kids still have active parents, or, better yet, both of them around, or parents that aren't supers, but people like Lo have had bad shit go down, same with Warren and you can't just go pry like, no matter how well you mean it, or why, because it just stirs the pot and brings everything to the surface. Okay?"

The explanation sobered Layla. She felt embarrassed and skeevy for asking in the first place. She decided to never bring it up again, partly because Magenta was right and partly because she'd been called on her actions. It also brought into light the aspect of why Magenta was suddenly so angry.

Layla pushed thoughts of Magenta's parents out of her mind and felt worse. But at least Magenta was upfront about her family history and didn't throw it under the rug for everyone to trip around like Lo.

"Yeah, I ge…-"

The back door slapped into the jam. Wood floor boards creaking and signaling Dolores' return. Glad that the blonde was too busy putting her hair into a ponytail to look at her, Layla stared at the splayed textbook on the floor.

Magenta pointedly ignored everything around her by pretending to be entranced by the etchings appraised at fifteen-hundred dollars on the television set.

"Stop talking shit about me and let's get to work, huh ladies? But not before someone kisses and band-aids my boo boos."

Shooting over the couch with a cheerfully oblivious and real smile the blonde stole a handful of pretzels from the bag on the coffee table.

Falling into Layla's shoulder she chewed and picked at the sliver of skin pulling away from her torn up elbow, she peeled it and flicked it onto the carpet.

Magenta and Layla caught eyes over the small distance of space between them, making a silent pact to leave and let be the topic just under discussion.

* * *

_10:16pm_

_(The Paper Lantern)_

It was better than sweeping, were his thoughts on folding silverware into cheap red linen napkins. It was therapeutic to go about the mind-numbing repetitive movements in the same pattern over and over again. When he first sat down to do his 'closing time task' it was a painful sort of boredom but after folding silverware for forty-five minutes straight he entered what Magenta might have, or rather had at some time or another, the folding silverware 'zone.'

He hadn't noticed it at first, it was only after he sat down and set up with carefully organized piles of scalding hot, right out of the dishwasher, utensils and squares of fabric did he see the gold and red good luck cat statuette reflect orange and black at him that he even saw it.

Not knowing exactly what to do with it he left it, and folded silverware for forty-five minutes. With only four sets left to do he came to the conclusion that he ought to do something about her phone sitting there next to him next to the proned-paw, good-luck cat.

Flicking at the paw that had stopped waving and throwing the last four sets of knives, forks, and spoons into the grey plastic dish bucket, making sure to afterwards hide them under the already made sets, he snatched at the object of his fixation, dropped it into the inside pocket of his jacket behind his cigarettes and got up.

He grabbed his jacket and the bucket, dropped it off next to the only still occupied dish station, A-mystery's, and called out to the other boy's back as he faced the bulletin cork board to clock him out.

"Gotta get out early?"

"Something like that," He didn't look back as he replied.

It took seven long-legged strides across the parking lot to get to his truck, the ding signaling that the driver's door had been opened went off, he didn't bother swinging all the way inside and shutting the door just then.

He opted, instead to in one movement yank both cigarettes and phone from jacket pocket.

On a whim he pressed a thumb to the truck lighter, pushed it in and waited for it to pop out, palm domed softly over the nub to catch it when it popped out.

"Hey! Warren!"

A-Mystery tore out the back door, doing a jog half-way to the truck. Warren clenched the items in his hand a bit tighter in reaction.

"Yeah, what's up?" He asked in between the motions of placing a fresh cigarette between his teeth.

The single back light of the Paper Lantern cast a piss-poor sodium yellow gleam on everything in the parking lot. Warren couldn't see the other boy's face well enough to gather an expression.

"I just was wondering if you wanted to switch a swift with me, I need next Thursday off and I saw you were off so I wanted to know if you'd switch Thursday off to, like…I don't know li…-"

"Sunday, seven to two. That's all I go…-"

The lighter shot out.

"Shit!"

Turning to look over for it before it burned the carpet in his truck he found it glowing hot under the passenger seat, the phone in his hand fell from his grasp and he banged his head on the window roller on his way back up from the floor of his truck.

The scent of burning upholstery wafted into his nostrils.

He cursed eloquently for the fourth time in as many seconds.

"You alright?"

Rolling his eyes he set himself back in the driver's seat, legs swinging against metal underbody. His head hurt, the dinging of the truck was getting on his nerves, he'd dropped the phone somewhere in the darkness of under the seats and his cigarette had come much too close to breaking.

"Fine. Sunday, seven to two. For Thursday…"

"Okay good."

Warren waited.

"Oh! Yeah, Thursday. Four to nine. Thanks. Why are you using your truck lighter to smoke?"

With a smirk he answered, "Why wouldn't I?"

"Whatever…and you're still wearing your apron."

Looking down he noticed that he was in fact still wearing his apron, slung across his jeans like a limp thing. He tore at the knot one handed and dragged it off; he tossed it across the parking lot.

A-Mystery caught it mid-air.

"Good night, thanks again."

Warren gave a nod and put the now dying orange coils against the end of his cigarette. He swung his legs into the truck and unrolled his window.

Putting the lighter back he weighed the option of opening the door again to look for the phone he'd dropped somewhere, deciding, finally that it could wait until after he got home.

He slapped the steering wheel with the heel of his hand, the truck jolted lightly in place.

"Fuck." He scowled around the smoke that clouded out of his mouth. He rubbed at his jaw and wiped across his mouth.

Leaning his head on the edge of the window jam he saw something whip against his tire, stuck underneath. It was hard to make out the color in the dark but he knew it was purple and black; he smiled at the idea of it blowing back.

He laughed wryly and coughed with an inhale.

* * *

_**7:04pm**_

_**September 9**__**th**__** (past Wednesday)**_

_**The Paper lantern**_

"_Your friend just walked in."_

_Warren looked up from setting the dishwasher to A-mystery, the other boy sat on the edge of the sink trying to untie a small and tight knot from the back of a waitresses black half-apron._

"_Who is it?" He went back to stacking the dishes into the white metal shelves._

"_Dolores. I think she's mad at you, she called you a jerk in class today when I was talking to her."_

_His head snapped up as he half-heartedly slammed the door to the dishwasher up._

_A-mystery did nothing but continue to work at the knot._

"_What?"_

"_Yeah, no I asked her to be my partner for genetics and she goes: 'only if you bring me lunch every day,' and so I go: 'why don't you get Warren to do it,' and then she said 'because he's a jerk,' you guys fighting or something?"_

_Warren had no idea, he didn't think so. _

_He wasn't sure if A-mystery was joking or not. From the way he said it though, the objectiveness of his statement he decided that he wasn't joking, which made him more confused._

_Only partly because of the subject matter._

_The other bit was something on the edge of his mind telling him A-mystery was not as objective to the situation as he wanted him to think._

"_No, we aren't," he said finally, confident in his delivery but unsure in his meaning._

"_She was probably joking then, you know like the way you joke, when you __**do**__ joke that is, which is, like, neveeeer…," the other boy let the word drag on while he yanked at the knot, he stopped to look at it and continued talking a long moment later._

"_Yeah, so she just came in. She looks angry. But since you two aren't fighting I'm thinking that's someone else's fault." He looked up to Warren and waited for an answer that Warren didn't have._

"_Who else is with her?"_

_Disappointed with the answer A-mystery went back to work on the apron, already bored with the conversation._

"_No one, just her."_

_Realization hit. He smiled._

"_That would be why."_

"_Why what?"_

"_Why she's angry," Warren left the kitchen and scoped the dining floor until he saw blonde and glasses. _

_He found it, sitting at a table away from everyone else, tucked in the corner of the restaurant, around the side of the small sushi bar._

_She was yanking off her jacket and looking predatory._

_Taking a utensil set from behind the hostess's post and grabbing a water pitcher and a glass from the serving counter he made his way over._

"_The jerk is here." _

_She looked surprised and her anger, for a moment, dissipated. He smiled down at her._

"_What?"_

_Filling the water glass for her and tossing the utensils down gently, he raised an eyebrow._

"_The kid in your genetics class."_

_Realization clouded her features for a second._

"_Oh yeah, I was joking. Ha, sorry about that. Everyone is just a jerk in my book today," She looked at him then and grinned._

"_Jeez sit down, I feel bad making you just stand there whenever we have a conversation when I'm here."_

_He sat._

"_I'm supposed to stand it's my job to stand and perform back breaking labor."_

_But he was sitting and she smiled and he smiled back._

"_Magenta ditch you?"_

_Lo gnawed at the inside of her mouth and puffed out her cheeks before answering._

"_No, her dad called and she had to run home. I was hungry and she's supposed to be coming back," she reached around the table and stole a straw from his apron pocket, unwrapped it and threw the crumpled ball of paper at him. It missed._

"…_eventually." _

_She took a sip of water and he looked to the brown paper bag sitting on the table next to her pack of cigarettes._

"_Perusing the liquor stores?"_

_She laughed and slid the bag over to him. She nodded when he gave her a look that asked if he could look. _

_He was surprised to find that inside was a glass statue of a nurse. He examined it carefully as she opened a stick of strawberry laffy taffy. _

_Looking up to catch her snap of a piece of the pink candy with her jaw strongly clenched and a pull of her arm he laughed._

"_Want some?"_

_He hated strawberry._

_Taking the proffered stick her bit at the end only a small distance down from where her teeth marks marred the candy._

_Giving it back she spun it over her fingers and yanked the wrapper down further, pointed it at him and grinned._

"_Now go make my food. Table boy."_

_Rolling his eyes he slid out of the booth._

"_Table boy my ass."_

_As he walked away he heard her call out at him, "Yeah walk that fine ass away to the kitchen, I'm starving over here!"_

_Heads turned towards her, she was too busy gnawing off another piece of candy to pay too much attention._

* * *

_**10:16pm**_

_She was still sitting at the same table._

_He'd visited sporadically throughout his shift to see how she was doing, refilling her water, talking, going about his routine tasks from behind the sushi counter so he wouldn't get yelled at for sitting at the same table of a customer._

_It had taken her an hour to eat; she was the last customer to pay for the night. No one else had come in for an hour and she'd been talking to A-mystery ever since his shift had ended at the same table she'd sat for the past three hours._

_Warren went over once he'd finished cleaning up the last table and stacking the chairs on top of it._

"_I mean I like 'advanced detective skills' and all, but he's just so dry as a teacher and really as of right now I'm really diggin' 'escapes,' we've got a project assigned right now that I like."_

"_What project?"_

"_Oh, well first we had to do this survey-ish thing where we made a facility and based on what everyone in the class did for that and what type of location we actually choose for our project she gave us one of the survey ones."_

"_What did you choose?"_

"_I was stuck between two; densely populated inside area or subterranean area, in the end I choose subterranean though. Even got what I wanted too. Desert area. Good stuff."_

"_Sounds fun all we got in 'disguise' wa…-"_

_His presence was noted with a full glance and a grin._

"_Hey, hot pants. Take a load off, converse, shift's over," she smiled up at him._

_He tilted his head to the side and let out a breath with closed eyes._

"_Shift is __**almost**__ over; we're kicking you out in fifteen minutes. Is Magenta coming, or do you need a ride?"_

_Lo stretched and got an angry look on her face at the mere mention of the other girl's name. _

"_Yeah, I need a ride. I tell you what happened later."_

_As if to remind her that he was still there A-mystery chimed in._

"_I can give you a lift."_

_She looked at him._

_Before she could answer Warren jumped on the question._

"_It's fine, and me and her have to talk anyway, about our 'soon to be deceased' friend Magenta. Right?"_

_He grinned when she nodded._

"_Affirmative. That and we have to engage in mortal combat in the parking lot, we don't want witnesses, or accidental bystander maimings."_

_Warren rolled his eyes._

_Not at her._

_At the other boy's too wide smile for her._

"_Alright, I'll see you tomorrow then, night." _

_Removing himself from the booth A-mystery made his way out of the Paper Lantern through the kitchen._

"_I'm going to go clock out, you can wait by my truck if you want. I'll be out in a minute."_

_Pulling on her jacket and grabbing the paper bag to her side she shifted out of the booth._

_A car honked outside happily, it was A-mystery saying goodnight in his own way before he drove off._

_Warren scowled and let his eyes roll widely in their sockets._

"_Almost forgot about this," she gestured to the bag._

"_Where are you pa…-"_

"_In the back." _

"_Alright see you 'in the back.'" The ring of the bell over the door accompanied her exit as he made his way into the kitchen._

_The dragon lady's husband let him off without any chastisement about clocking out early and bid him goodnight as Warren folded his apron up and clocked out._

_He twirled his keys around his finger and made his way out into the parking lot. He nodded at his fellow employees smoking with a group of other teenagers slung over the handlebars of their bikes in the corner of the parking lot._

_She sat on the folded down tail-gate of his truck, unlit cigarette hanging from her lips, waiting for him. _

_Making sure no one was watching too closely and turning his back he lit up a finger and offered it to her._

"_Thanks." _

"_No problem."_

_She lit another cigarette off the end of the first as he jumped up next to her._

"_Here," she gave him the one he'd lit up._

_It had the indent of her teeth on the filter._

_Idly he wondered if everything she put her mouth on ended up with the tiny crenulations. Or bruises. _

_He savored the thought and filed it away. _

_In the corner of the parking lot someone's mother drove up to pick them up and with the slam of a car door and fading radio pop music the crowd of teens thinned._

"_So what happened with Magenta?"_

"_She left me here."_

"_You piss her off?"_

"_More like she has an unrich fantasy life so she has to make do with making everyone else's life awkward and altogether hell-like, no wait...hellish? Yeah, hellish is the word ."_

"_What does that have to do with anything?" _

_He watched a plastic grocery bag roll across the asphalt like a suburban tumbleweed._

"_Just popped into my head, it was too good of a thought not to say. I meant that she just likes to be a pain, we're just her source of amusement."_

"_You mean everyone, right? Not just 'us' exclusively, right?"_

"_Yes. But right now it doesn't seem like it does it? Maybe it's because we're like the only ones that can be singled out. You know what I mean?"_

_He did._

"_Yeah, like Layla and Will are doing their thing and aren't as fun to her anymore and Zach is just not with her but still with her in a different sense, just not in the obvious sense, and Ethan doesn't play into her bullshit. I know."_

_She blew out a puff of smoke and her eyes creased, she looked thoughtful._

"_So when she asks we're going to have to tell her that we had hot wild sex on top of a dishwasher tonight, okay?"_

_He laughed loudly._

"_They're too hot to have sex on."_

_She took a drag and seemed to mull the statement over in her head for a moment and then grinned widely, shaking her head to something funny._

"_What?" He asked._

"_Sorry, just thought of something and I shouldn't even say it. Seriously."_

_He waited._

"_But you will say it, you always say it."_

"_Yeah, okay. So what I was going to say was, the dishwasher really can't ever be __**too**__ hot because it's just like…frosty cheeks," she laughed._

"_And then I thought 'wow, if I ever became a stripper that would be my stripper name,'" she looked to him and laughed harder than she was already._

"'_Frosty Cheeks,' that's funny. You should go for your dreams. The sky's the limit. Work for your singles," he laughed with her._

"_I can't believe she left me here."_

_Her face turned puggish under her frustration and he watched her bite down hard on her cigarette's filter. Propping an elbow up onto the edge of the truck bed she stewed silently for a moment._

"_You wanna go?"_

_Warren saw her expression fall and her shoulders sag in a kind of defeat. He couldn't decipher what those types of looks meant, or were for; he wondered if he was the only one that got them._

"_Yeah, sure. I gotta get some sleep."_

_He hopped off the tailgate, shaking the truck a bit and looked to her as she suddenly became spotlighted by headlights._

_A car door opened with the engine still on and heels clunked dully on the asphalt._

"_Yo. Get in, ho."_

_Magenta had never had worse timing. _

_The wind kicked up and surprisingly he noted that the blonde's features had, if anything softened._

_Throwing her cigarette over the edge of the truck bed she held out her arms._

"_Come get me sugar sweetness," her voice was casually amused. But her eyes, and he could see them even though Magenta couldn't from behind the glare of the headlights, were vicious._

_Tsking and rolling her eyes Magenta tottled forward, shaky in high-heels on the cracked and uneven pavement. _

"_I can still take you home you know, if you two are going to claw each other's eyes out and all."_

"_Oh shut up, Warren!" _

_Magenta pushed him roughly to the side. It was playful but it still sent him reaching for the edge of the truck to catch himself._

"_You're an ass you know that?"_

"_Yeah, I know. Whatcha gonna do 'bout it?_

_They spoke to each other as if they'd forgotten he was there a foot away._

_And he watched her reach out with a smile that betrayed nothing but amiable intentions and twirl the ends of Magenta's black and purple stripped gauzy scarf._

_For a second Magenta just smiled._

"_What you gonna kiss me or something?"_

_The blonde reached out her legs straight from where they had been hanging limp under the tail-gate and wrapped them loosely around the other girl's waist._

"_You wish, Rat-girl."_

_Warren suddenly felt like he had missed something or skewed something or dreamed something up because he was sure he didn't understand what had happened or what was suddenly going on between the two girls._

"_I dare ya, Snowball." It was a joke but when said that way it could have been taken seriously._

_And for a second he did think that's exactly how Lo took it._

_He actually believed she was going to __**kiss**__ Magenta._

_And there was nothing sexual behind it; it was just too weird for it to become sexual._

_But he'd be a liar if he said he didn't feel his jeans get pulled a bit tighter in a choice spot when she gripped the center of the other girl's scarf and pulled her in closer, legs still around skirted hips._

_So maybe it had been a __**bit**__ sexual in that moment, but in a dream sort of way. _

_Sexual without logic or reason behind it._

_**Crack**_

_And their foreheads collided with a slam forward and a yank on the scarf. _

_Another pull and the scarf came free. _

_Reaching a hand up and letting it fly off into the parking lot was deliberate and artful in a swirl of gauzy purple and black spinning out of sight._

"_OWWWW, my fucking head!"_

"_You deserved that. Now get in the car."_

_The blonde uncrossed her legs from the other girl's waist and slid to the side and off the tail-gate. She bounded away into the running vehicle._

_Magenta looked to him when she finally stopped shaking against the edge of his truck from the pain rattling inside her skull._

_It had probably hurt Lo just as much, but that wasn't the point. _

_The point was that she had made her point. _

_Point by pain._

_The look Magenta gave him was a probing one, one of confirmation that asked 'that really just happened, right?'_

"_You did leave her here for four hours, don't look at me."_

_She scowled and flipped him off with a grimace while still rubbing her head with her other hand. She got in the car, slammed the door and drove off in so calm a manner that it shocked him. _

_Where he had been expecting screeching tires and a whip out there were softly rotating tires and a smooth curve across the asphalt and out of the parking lot._

_From the second long gaze he got at the passenger window he knew, from the look the blonde gave him as she pressed her head tight against the window for the added chill and from the wide louping smile she offered that it had been worth the skull-cracking on her end._

_That night he dreamed of her defrosting a dishwasher with a block of ice inside it by stabbing it with cigarette after cigarette. _

* * *

___12:36am_

_Lo's House_

They for the most part ignored each other while at their respective tasks that coalesced into an orchestra of quiet sounds.

The flip and swick of paper jostled back and forth.

The metal chink of scissors as it snipped at remnants of poster-board.

The peel of sticky notes away from the little yellow pad.

Lo looked through the schematics of her given project location and marked off points of interest with a pencil that when not in use found itself perched between lips and gums. She remained transfixed and squinty eyed over the large piece of trace paper blueprints.

Layla cut out complimentary shapes and colored them in with different shades of green for her Woundcare class; it was a project on the different types of pastes and balms that could be made out of plants. Needless to say she was pleased.

Magenta let her breath spill out in accented huffs and puffs while trying to find the blurb in the textbook that explained how exactly to manipulate the air suction control system inside the turbines of a dehumidifier. She tried to stick to the clues and hints Lo had given her in order to at least be finished with the instructional portion of her project.

"Uggggh why did I have to get the shit-tay lo-caaaaaaay-tion!"

Magenta as it turned out was not an attractive whiner, she cringed and cried and clenched. It was at best distracting and at worst horrific.

Layla never taking her eyes off of the leaf she was making out of oak-tag responded with dull interest.

"Karma."

"Do you need another hint?" Lo flipped a page in her scrap notebook to review the bullet-points she had haphazardly scribbled down.

"Yeeeeeees," Magenta intoned dramatically.

Lo looked up from her key points.

"Okay, so like I said before you have a few choices, can I see the schematics and the blueprint key for a sec?"

The other girl handed off the references.

"Alright, so you're given all this information. You have to find what looks suspect. Like, yeah there's the front entrance but what else is there? Since you have an underwater location which is basically a sub-category of subterranean,"

She paused and looked up to see if Magenta was following. She seemed to be and sat rapt biting at her cuticle with one knee bent up out of her oversized tee-shirt and the rest pooled over her lap. Her eyes met the other girl's and Magenta smiled sheepishly, like a little kid.

"So let's go down the line: How else can you get in?"

Lo waited.

Magenta sat dumbly.

Layla piped up while layering her leaf cut-outs on top of one another. While uncapping a green marker and going around the leaf on the bottom she supplied the answer Magenta couldn't find.

"Where the air comes in, the port or the supply bay that's left open for underwater seafaring vehicles, etcetera."

"Thanks, Layla. Also if there was a lab you could put the lab port to the water."

"But there isn't a lab."

Lo smiled ready to correct the other girl.

"But there _is_ a research dock, here," she pointed to a spot on the blueprint.

"But how would I get in there? Ahhhh, gawd this is sooo hard!"

Magenta put her head on her knee and stared intently at the papers.

Lo sympathized.

"It's not asking how _you_ would get in, it's just asking for a viable option on how to get in and get to the checkpoint with minimal or controllable interference from the villains slash civilians. So tell me how to get in Magenta."

"Well…you could go in through here," she pressed a nail to the transportation port.

"Good, you have a point of 'origin,' so to speak. Now what? How will you deal with the people inside?"

Magenta looked stumped.

"No fucking clue, like I said I need help."

Layla had finished coloring one multi-layered leaf and was gluing it to her poster.

"You would manipulate the oxygen levels and disable the back-up pump. It's probably somewhere towards the edges of the schematic."

She went back to her gluing and pasting and cutting and coloring.

Magenta looked over to the redhead and nodded with apprehension.

"Oh, I get it. So with the oxygen cut off for long enough everyone will pass out. But what if they die?"

"You would have to do some equations to figure out how much air fits into that many cubic feet and see how many people are there and the ratio of men to women since they breathe at different rates and the ages for the same reason and then apply that to how many cubic inches of oxygen each consume in a given time frame, I would use a minute myself, it's more specific."

Lo paused and looked over to Layla who remained passive and in her scrap-book like decoration mode.

"And then that's your ceiling limit, you go over that by whatever the point of passing out is by about no more than ten minutes, into which you should estimate travel time and how long it will take to get port access. Then you go in with supplemental oxygen and get to the place you need to get to, and then you get out and restart the oxygen supply."

Magenta looked dumbfounded.

She took a moment to drag over a couch cushion to sit on and retrieve her cigarettes from the coffee table.

Lighting up and letting out the first drag she smiled and said, "I want to lick your brain. Your project is probably amazing and mine is shit. Your's is going to end up being done and look like a conspiracy wrapped in a plot inside a government agenda with area 51 being explained and the Lindenburg baby being found."

Lo went back to detailing in her essay outline how exactly one would scale up the side of the desert facility as it came up from underground to purge its carbon dioxide supply and suck up oxygen from the outside and then manage to get into the facility by shimmying across the bridge one pillar made to another as the ventilation system expanded to move air throughout the facility.

She'd already finished her graphic representation of the project. All that was left was the status report and the explanation of how the infiltration and escape plans would work.

Although the project had originally called for an "escape plan" her, Magenta, and several other had received the task of "entrance" plans because of the locations having multiple people doing plans on them.

"Soooo can I ask you a question and not have you get pissed? Since you never even acknowledged me buttering you up by all that lick your brain stuff." Magenta asked quizzical of what Lo's response would be.

Knowing already that nothing good would come of it and being drastically bored from the past two hours being spent doing the class assignment the blonde nodded.

"I'm already pissed but you're going to say it anyway, so just ask."

"Did Warren say anything about the picture?"

"He said he'd delete it." Layla was the one to answer.

Instantly Lo found herself replaying her own conversation with Warren and found she couldn't remember even asking him herself to delete the picture.

She could have kicked herself in retrospect.

Magenta pointed her cigarette and waved it in Layla's direction.

"Not my point, not what I meant, but while we're on that he said what?"

Layla huffed and pushed her bangs off her eyes.

"He said he would delete it. That was it."

"That's it?"

"Yes, Magenta. Now you're pissing me off. I'm the one with scissors here you know. Maybe not the best idea to keep annoying me."

"Ugh, fine. But that's way weird. And don't stab me here but I have to ask did you _tell_ him to delete the picture or did he offer that up himself?"

Layla looked away from her paper leaves, knowing that she would not be able to concentrate on them and on Magenta at the same time and answered with a tick in her voice.

"He offered it up without me asking him."

"Wow," Magenta looked away and puffed on her cigarette.

"Wow, what?" Layla asked looking to Lo with a look that conveyed sympathy for the topic that Magenta was so ready to cover.

"I'll get to that. What did he say to you about the picture?"

She looked at Lo, cigarette smoke now wafting in her direction.

The blonde shrugged and made a face, she looked down at her writing and jotted down a note next to one of her key-points and put a checkmark by another.

"Nothing, he just said in revenge I should get a picture of you naked and send it to Zack. That was about it."

"He didn't say, 'nice tits,' or, 'I like your panties,' or, 'you look hot'?"

"Nope."

"Truly, he is complex. Like this algebra I'm about to have to do for oxygen and carbon dioxide and lung volume."

Lo was confused.

"How is he complex?"

"You're the one who talked to him; you should know this already and why."

"Oh, I'm sorry. It's an everyday occurrence to have pictures of my barely concealed tits sent out in a text mes…-"

"If you two don't stop I will stab you both with these scissors. We've established that Magenta is an asshole and that you can beat the shit out of someone. So let's just stop and take a break because I'm not getting anything done now that Magenta has brought this up."

Silence fell when Layla had finished and they all looked at each other with Magenta finally flopping back onto the pile of couch cushions on the floor behind her with, "Sorry Lay, sometimes there are no tracks for the runaway train of my mind. And I am sorry about the pic, I was an asshole. I deserved to be beaten. I concede to that, but I still think you and Warren need to work out whatever it is that you two have got going on."

Lo took a cigarette out of Magenta's pack and inhaled the menthol flavor of it. She rubbed at her tired eyes, sick at the turn the topic had taken.

"There's nothing going on Magenta. At this point I just want a guy who I can walk in and hit in the face with a textbook first period and then get a back massage from. That's all I'm looking for, alright. I don't need a boyfriend or someone to fuck around with. I just want to sit home and read and do my work and relax. Right now I'm lucky to get four hours to sleep at night, six when the universe aligns perfectly. So where exactly would I, if I wanted to, which I don't, fit a penis into that equation?"

"It's not like you guys couldn't get together in a few years or whatever, it's not like it'd be a stretch of the imagination. Fire and ice and all that. It'd be cute. Ya know?"

Magenta didn't look at her as she explicitly brought up the point of a topic she'd only ever danced around before. Lo wondered if it was because Magenta knew how dumb it sounded.

"Oooooh how original. Fire and ice. Jeez like I don't hear that every day from some asshole. And do what in the mean time? Carry him around in my pocket and go, 'sorry, not right now but remain celibate and doe-eyed over me for five or so years and I'll get to you,' which is something he wouldn't do anyway, and this is neglecting the fact that it's self-obsessed and selfish to expect things like that."

"I think it's cute. You're like mortal enemies. They say mortal enemies make the best _lovers_." Magenta smirked whimsically at her own fake coyness on the subject. Now Lo knew Magenta knew how dumb what she was saying was.

Layla's face scrunched up in a look that spelled 'ewwwww.'

"Too bad neither of _us_ have a penis, Magenta. We'd be causing domestic disturbances all over the place with our wild monkey-like fornicative activities going on all over the place, upside down and in children's playgrounds."

"I'm going to go make popcorn. You guys handle this dirty talk without me sitting right here."

The redhead made her way to the kitchen with Magenta shouting 'prude' after her.

"Are you still angry at me?"

"Yep."

"Sorry."

"I know."

"But I'm still an asshole?"

"Yep."

"For the picture?"

"And the topic that was just under discussion."

"Dually noted."

They both reclined across from each other on makeshift posts of cushions and pillows and blankets, smoking and taking in each other's bruised eye sockets and broken lips.

* * *

_1:14am_

Sitting down at the kitchen table in the dim lighting she wondered how much longer it would take for the other two girls to finally be down for the night. No sooner than they had declared work on their projects fruitless at such a late hour Magenta proclaimed it the perfect time to teach Layla the delicate art of Egyptian Rat Screw.

The redhead wasn't bad at the game but eventually once the blonde left the room the game switched to Kentucky Rummy and now the odd girl out found herself in the kitchen poking at bruises and peeling half-formed scabs in abstract boredom.

She'd been itching to sit down with glitter glue and tape and stickers every since watching Layla work on her woundcare project.

Clearing the kitchen table she set everything up for her half-involved hobby of scrapbooking.

Truth be told, she'd only come up with the idea in junior year and had collected various items for it and then never found the time until the past summer to actually sit down and involve herself in the project that was beloved and longed for by bored housewives.

With a cigarette in hand and one foot perched on her chair she carefully taped a green hall-pass into the corner of an empty page.

A wrapper for sour-patch kids candy that she stole from Magenta last year followed it into the book.

Slowly she stopped flicking through her shoebox of paper keepsakes.

Underneath the edges of them, at the bottom of the box she found a slip of paper.

She took it out and finally when she found that she'd been staring at it for too much time decided to give it its page. The tape was wider than the tiny slip of paper and longer when she tore it off from the rest of the wheel.

It made the page curl up in the middle from the tension of the tape.

When she finished she slammed the book, angry at herself and unable to explain why.

_Suppose you can get want you want_

_Lucky Numbers: 12, 9, 44, 35, 15_

She snorted.

* * *

_2:08am_

_Warren's House_

He'd been home by midnight, with a paper bag from the gas station, Magenta's scarf, and Dolores's cellphone.

He'd spent an hour wandering through the house going about his small tasks as if they were the only thing in the world worth doing.

Making coffee, putting bowls of cat-food outside on the patio at the back of the house, throwing his ripe smelling shirt into the hamper and throwing his head under the bathtub facet for the chill of water over his neck, chest, and back.

When he went out onto the front porch he didn't bother with a shirt, only stooped to reach his cigarettes and plain paper bag from the twenty-four hour gas station that he'd thrown onto the living room couch when he walked into the house.

Out on the porch the night carried the smell of coming fall and the mulch of decomposing leaves.

He'd went to the tin box by the door after he'd set down the paper bag on the porch swing. Pulling out the bag of food and the bowl he poured out a portion and set it under the swing.

He sat down prepared to wait and thought about the weight in his pocket.

Thought about the way things had been before, he didn't know when the _after_ the 'before' came about. He found it impossible to believe it to have just happened a few hours ago with the actions of Magenta.

The fact that he couldn't put a finger on the exact moment of time when the nature of their relationship had changed bothered him; it itched in his brain like a purulent splinter stick.

The structure, the foundation of it had shifted. Now the mutuality of whatever it was that was going on had changed.

He didn't think he understood her yet, and with that piece of knowledge he knew that something was wrong.

Something mewed at his bare foot, clawing happily at the side of it. He winced but only for a second before he picked the stray up by its scruff.

The small calico was not please and made an unpleasant sound at him.

"You know what's up."

He held the small animal in the space between elbow and arm and kept it against his chest as he shifted to reach the paper bag.

Ripping open one of the seven small square boxes he unfurled the roll of purple medicinal flea collar and put it on the cat. He cut it with the Swiss army knife on his key ring.

"There you go." When he let the kitten go it stayed close and swished it tail across his bare feet.

He wouldn't have been able to say what it was about him that the cats liked but he assumed it was the heat he put off.

When the cat stopped moving he lit a cigarette and pulled her phone out of his pocket, followed by his and set them down side by side.

The urge to call her struck him. It was after all a time of night that if anyone would be up it would be her for no other reason than the hours she kept, which were unpredictable and always odd.

When he thought of her he thought of ungodly hours of the early morning, the hours when the moon was too low and sun was just plumage.

Her schedule was one where she was only truly ever doing something _when_ she wanted to do something. Warren didn't figure her for someone that did something just because there was nothing to do; somehow he knew she'd much rather doing nothing when there was nothing to do.

He thought of the coldest hours of the day during the summer and the warmest in the winter, suddenly knowing it was too dark to see the face of his watch but understanding he would get no sleep he grabbed her phone and turned it on.

What he was about to do he did only because it was so late and because he knew he'd thought himself into that certain state of mind where 'fuck it' became the method and mode of action of choice.

Turning the phone on, he read her messages.

All seventy-three of them.

Mostly they were from Magenta. He smiled to find that he was not the only one getting shit from their mutual friend. Most of it was about him, some of it wasn't.

When he finished snooping he wondered what he'd been looking for in the first place.

Confirmation.

Assuagement.

Fixation.

Suddenly very fed up with himself he wrote it off as a side-effect of too late a night.

The cat against his side clawed at his hip and studded belt.

He smiled at it and remembered something he'd read about cats. The only part of whatever story it was that the cat made a deal with something or someone and he would kill mice and be nice to babies that didn't pull his tail but when he was done with those things and when between those times and when the moon came up he would walk by himself and all places were the same to him and he would walk through the wild places waving his tale and be a wild cat.

Domestication and freedom.

He blew out smoke with a heavy breath and ran a hand through his damp hair.

"Shit."

The cat that was still more kitten than cat meowed and looked up at him. It gave a half-hearted attempt at picking the collar and then flicked its tail against his side and went about licking its paws.

The sounds of eating made him look over his shoulder at one of the other remaining six cats he had to collar. He repeated the same routine for the new arrival and no sooner had he cut the excess bit of collar off than the small creature settled across his thigh.

"Brat," the cat looked up at him.

Before five minutes had elapsed he'd gotten another one down and had it curled in the spot behind him on the porch.

His cigarette was long since finished by the time he turned her phone off and reached for his. The picture was still there.

It wasn't as if deleting it was any big event, as the image was already stamped behind his eyelids. The angry scowl on her face just before the yell she'd been sure to have thrown out was particularly fetching.

He snorted.

Everything else wasn't bad either.

It was suggestive sure, but it wasn't instant teenage boy erection worthy.

"What do you think?" He flashed the phone at the cat lounging languidly over his thigh. It looked at the source of the glow by its face and then turned away disinterested.

"Yeah, I know. Not your type."

He deleted it without pause.

While the thought of her like that was enough to get him off it wasn't exactly the only thing in his mind worth unzipping his jeans for.

It _had_ gotten him riled up enough to engage in rather _private_ actions not long after he'd gotten home but mostly as he laid down in bed, back pressed hard against wrinkled sheets, pants unzipped and sweating hard even with the fan blowing on high it had only been one of the many things his mind jumped too while he'd rubbed at a rather pesky piece of anatomy.

It'd been a fixture but no more the main event than the jumble of flesh and sweat and movement of rhythm and scenario his mind melded together while his hand took up familiar motions.

Most of the scenarios involving blonde and taut cold skin had melted into the other ones of sweaty slapping hips and athletic female grunting and firm, soft thighs around his waist. He had been too tired to come up with an elaborate fantasy.

He emptied his pockets of the rest of their contents to distract himself from the flush of blood that washed lower in his body at the thought of sex.

Tips mostly came out, forty-three dollars in total. A pen with a chewed cap. A hall pass.

His thoughts moved onto school.

He'd done all his homework while on break but he was stuck on the day's events before he'd gone off to work.

She was in his driver's education class.

And while he was going for the insurance discount she was going to actually learn a skill that the majority of her peers had already mastered. The irony of it made him smile.

For someone so smart she certainly didn't pay much attention to activities beyond bookwork.

* * *

_**Dr.'s Education Class**_

_**(Maxville Recreational Center)**_

_**2:23pm**_

_The large and for some reason angry seeming man in the colorful Hawaiian shirt that taught the driver's education lecture class was going over the course itinerary in brief to the few students on time for the class._

_Warren sat top row, furthest corner from the door in the lecture hall that the town of Maxville rented out for various educational courses, weekly bingo, and town supervisor meetings while the main offices were being rebuilt after last week's Richter scale worthy shakes from 'Earth Boomer' destroyed numerous buildings uptown. _

_She sat polar opposite, bottom row closet to the door, three seats away from where the teacher sat organizing papers on the other side of the row._

_He watched her write down dates and details and then stare off out the open door into the hallway._

_She'd said hello and smiled vibrantly at him, smelling of fresh smoke, on her way into the room as he moved on to his own choice in seating._

_The class droned on._

_The teacher yelled half-heartedly at the students who came in much too late to get credit for the day and repeated the last few points he had been making, more so because he'd forgotten where he was in the lecture than for the benefit of the late comers. _

_When class was over they picked up the workbooks part of their three hundred and sixty dollar class cost went towards and everyone left; some quick , some dawdling along with friends, a handful staying behind to talk about payment for the class and the actual car portion of it with the teacher._

_She'd been the first one out._

_He'd been surprised to find her waiting outside the door leaning casually like a girl with nothing better to do than hold up a wall and look good doing it. From the small smirk he could have guessed she knew how she looked._

"_Hey." _

"_Hey."_

"_Do you have a ride?"_

_She floundered and side-stepped a group of girls coming out of the room._

"_I do have other friends that can drop my ass off, Warren."_

_He grinned._

_She knew what he was going to say and rolled her eyes._

"_Yeah, and who's picking you up?"_

"…_Magenta. Obviously."_

"_She's not pissed?"_

_They walked down the hall._

"_We have an…odd…," she paused and hefted her bag higher onto her shoulder and stopped by a window and looked out before answering._

"…_relationship. Besides she has no right to be pissed. We're even. Ya know?"_

_He nodded and leaned up against the window pane, sitting slightly. He had no where better to be, besides work but he had forty minutes to get there._

"_So what are you doing tonight?"_

"_Hanging with the girls. We're going to work on our projects, and we'll see how that goes. I'm tired though. And I have to wait for Maj because she's picking up Layla from work and then coming here."_

_Warren was distracted from his response by the giggling two-some that passed loudly and clumsily._

"_Hmph."_

_He turned back to her._

"_What?"_

"_You've got admirers," she batted her eyelashes and held her hands to her cheeks in a parody of coyness._

_He turned back to look at the girls who were eyeing him as they walked away. They cackled and stumbled off when he caught them looking._

"_Ha!" _

_He laughed._

"_Better watch yourself babe, they might try to round you up." _

_He gave no response besides an eye-roll of his own._

"_So what are __**you**__ doing tonight?"_

"_Working. The usual."_

_She got a look he couldn't find the category for._

"_The usual? What's that consist of. Beer pong, wild parties, watching porn, rubbing one out, setting fire to the bed sheets, with raucous humping? I'm sure those girls wouldn't mind. But two, jeez. Shit even I'd be shot after that, even with my massive cock." _

_She laughed while he gaped unable to regain his mental balance._

"_I think you're a boy."_

_She laughed._

"_Glad you can look beyond my massive rack to the young stallion of male energy that lurks beneath my boyishly pretty features."_

_Unconsciously he looked at her chest._

_They were anything but big. _

"_Hey!"_

_She slapped his arm and shook her head._

"_It's not my fault they're small, ya know. Besides I like 'em like that, so stop staring at my tater tots."_

_He laughed and let himself get pulled along outside for a smoke._

_Magenta came not long after with Layla in tow and Lo was forced to hand off her cigarette at the bequest of Layla who didn't like the smoke being trapped in the enclosed space of the car._

"_See ya later."_

"_Yep."_

_He took a drag off her left behind cigarette and came away with the stick of her chap stick on his mouth._

* * *

_2:29am_

He decided to nut up.

The text was short and sent to Layla's phone.

_U guys still up? [TO: Layla, 2:30am]_

Blowing smoke onto the orange cat on his thigh he waited, not seriously expecting a reply and quickly growing agitated that he'd sent one to begin with.

His phone vibrated.

_U have my phone…I hope, im up drop it off –Lo [FROM: Layla, 2:32am]_

_He replied._

_Y r u on lay's phone? U want me 2 drop it off now? [TO: Layla, 2:33am]_

_BC she left it out, yes now u busy? [FROM: Layla, 2:33am]_

_No, not busy, b there in 15 ok? [TO: Layla, 2:34am]_

_Thx :) [FROM: Layla, 2:34am]_

_Np [TO: Layla, 2:34am]_

Suddenly he wasn't quite as bored.

Suddenly he wondered how what had just happened had happened.

He chalked it up to the fact that it was past 2am.

* * *

**A/N:** It's been awhile, huh? Yeah sorry about the wait. Review if you find the time, I love to know what you all think. Sorry again for the wait but nursing school is a killer and even the summer is packed with work from power-points to case studies to med sheets life is hectic and dandy at the same time. Thanks for being patient, next chapter is a continuation of this one and then we're back to the prologue bits. Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed, and I'll try not to keep you waiting so long for the next one.


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